---
title: It was New Year's Eve, and the church clock was striking twelve. " — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: It was New Year's Eve, and the church clock was striking twelve. " Who acts: Bump, church clock. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Mail-coach Passengers, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Mail-coach Passengers, sentence 3

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
It was New Year's Eve, and the church clock was striking twelve. "

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**Who acts:** Bump, church clock · **What happens:** be, strike · **To what, where:** Eve, twelve

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Mail-coach Passengers. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Bump, church clock), 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:pg27200:82:3
# text = It was New Year's Eve, and the church clock was striking twelve. "
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
3	New	New	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	_
4	Year	Year	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	's	's	PART	POS	_	4	case	_	_
6	Eve	Eve	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	church	church	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	compound	_	_
11	clock	clock	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
12	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
13	striking	strike	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	6	conj	_	_
14	twelve	twelve	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
16	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | Bump | New Year's Eve |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **strike** | past · progressive | the church clock | twelve |  |  |  |  | vn hit-18.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent twelve=Patient |

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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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