---
title: “Oh, were I but old enough to fly across the sea! — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Oh, were I but old enough to fly across the sea! A sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Fir Tree, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/10/26/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Andersen's Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/) / [The Fir Tree](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/10/) / 26

# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Fir Tree, sentence 26

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
“Oh, were I but old enough to fly across the sea!

<!-- .vintro -->
**What happens:** be, fly · **To what, where:** Stork, sea

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Fir Tree. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg1597:10:26
# text = “Oh, were I but old enough to fly across the sea!
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Oh	oh	INTJ	UH	_	5	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
5	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
6	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
8	enough	enough	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	fly	fly	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	advcl	_	_
11	across	across	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	sea	sea	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** *in a quote* | past |  | the Stork *= stork* |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **fly** *in a quote* | to-infinitive |  |  |  | the sea |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme across sea=Trajectory |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, Project Gutenberg book 1597 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 25](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/10/25/)
- next →: [sentence 27](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/10/27/)
- ↑ back to [The Fir Tree](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/10/)