---
title: He spoke of farming, but what he said could scarcely be heard for th… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: He spoke of farming, but what he said could scarcely be heard for the coughing and gasping of his neighbor. Who acts: owner. 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 78

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He spoke of farming, but what he said could scarcely be heard for the coughing and gasping of his neighbor.

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**Who acts:** owner · **What happens:** speak, say, hear, cough · **To what, where:** neighbor · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (owner), 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:pg27200:82:78
# text = He spoke of farming, but what he said could scarcely be heard for the coughing and gasping of his neighbor.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	spoke	speak	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	of	of	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	farming	farming	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
6	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
7	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	13	nsubj:outer	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	acl:relcl	_	_
10	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
11	scarcely	scarcely	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
12	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	aux:pass	_	_
13	heard	hear	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	2	conj	_	_
14	for	for	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	coughing	coughing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
18	gasping	gasping	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	conj	_	_
19	of	of	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
20	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	21	nmod:poss	_	_
21	neighbor	neighbor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **speak** *speech: other* | past | owner |  |  |  |  | of farming | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | owner |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **hear** | could · passive |  |  |  |  |  | for the coughing of owner's neighbor and gasping; scarcely *property* | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: subject=Stimulus |
| 4 | **cough** |  |  | owner's neighbor |  |  |  |  | nom coughing «state transitive»: of=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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