---
title: "Perhaps you came from a dung-heap," observed the oldest of them. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "Perhaps you came from a dung-heap," observed the oldest of them. Who acts: you. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Beetle Who Went on His Travels, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Beetle Who Went on His Travels, sentence 78

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"Perhaps you came from a dung-heap," observed the oldest of them.

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** come, observe · **To what, where:** dung heap

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Beetle Who Went on His Travels. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg27200:8:78
# text = "Perhaps you came from a dung-heap," observed the oldest of them.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Perhaps	perhaps	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
3	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	from	from	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
7	dung	dung	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	heap	heap	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	_
12	observed	observe	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	oldest	old	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	12	ccomp	_	_
15	of	of	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come** *in a quote* | past | you |  |  | a dung heap |  | perhaps *property* | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme from heap=Initial\_Location |
| 2 | **observe** | past | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Text:** «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Project Gutenberg book 27200 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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