---
title: The learned men have done nothing at all but use their tongues. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: The learned men have done nothing at all but use their tongues. Who acts: learned men. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Marsh King's Daughter, part 6, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Marsh King's Daughter, part 6, sentence 14

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The learned men have done nothing at all but use their tongues.

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**Who acts:** learned men · **What happens:** learn, do, use · **To what, where:** nothing, all, tongues

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Marsh King's Daughter, part 6. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (learned men), 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:pg27200:88:14
# text = The learned men have done nothing at all but use their tongues.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	learned	learn	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	3	amod	_	_
3	men	man	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
4	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	done	do	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
6	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	5	obj	_	_
7	at	at	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	5	obl	_	_
9	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	use	use	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	conj	_	_
11	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	tongues	tongue	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **learn** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn learn-14-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **do** | present · perfect | the learned men | nothing |  | all |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent nothing=Eventuality |
| 3 | **use** | infinitive | the learned men *not said here* | men's tongues |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent tongue=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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