---
title: It seemed to him like turning over the leaves of a book. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: It seemed to him like turning over the leaves of a book. Who acts: It. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Little Tuk, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Little Tuk, sentence 47

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It seemed to him like turning over the leaves of a book.

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**Who acts:** It · **What happens:** seem, turn · **To what, where:** Denmark, leaves

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Little Tuk. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (It), 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:pg27200:80:47
# text = It seemed to him like turning over the leaves of a book.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	seemed	seem	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	obl	_	_
5	like	like	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
6	turning	turn	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	2	xcomp	_	_
7	over	over	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	leaves	leaf	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obl	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	book	book	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **seem** | past | It |  | Denmark |  |  |  | vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Theme clause=Attribute |
| 2 | **turn** | gerund |  |  |  | the leaves of a book |  |  | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP V PP.trajectory»: agent=Theme over leaf=Trajectory |

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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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