---
title: The postillion blew his horn, but he only thought, 'I can play capit… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: The postillion blew his horn, but he only thought, 'I can play capitally. Who acts: postillion, I. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Seventh Evening, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Seventh Evening, sentence 15

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The postillion blew his horn, but he only thought, 'I can play capitally.

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**Who acts:** postillion, I · **What happens:** blow, think, play · **To what, where:** horn · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Seventh Evening. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (postillion, I), 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:pg27200:98:15
# text = The postillion blew his horn, but he only thought, 'I can play capitally.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	postillion	postillion	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	blew	blow	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	horn	horn	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
7	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
9	only	only	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
10	thought	think	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
12	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
14	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
15	play	play	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	ccomp	_	_
16	capitally	capitally	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **blow** | past | the postillion | postillion's horn |  |  |  |  | vn split-23.2 «NP V NP apart»: agent=Agent horn=Patient |
| 2 | **think** *speech: other* | past | postillion |  |  |  |  |  | vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 3 | **play** | can | I |  |  |  |  | capitally *property* | vn performance-26.7-1 «NP V»: 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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