---
title: I want something better than what is but what is fled in an instant. — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: I want something better than what is but what is fled in an instant. Who acts: I. A sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Shoes of Fortune, part 5, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/9/108/)

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# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Shoes of Fortune, part 5, sentence 108

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I want something better than what is but what is fled in an instant.

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** want, flee · **To what, where:** something, instant

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This is a sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Shoes of Fortune, part 5. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (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:pg1597:9:108
# text = I want something better than what is but what is fled in an instant.
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	want	want	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	2	obj	_	_
4	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	2	xcomp	_	_
5	than	than	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	4	obl	_	_
7	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
9	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	11	nsubj:pass	_	_
10	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux:pass	_	_
11	fled	flee	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	6	conj	_	_
12	in	in	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	instant	instant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **want** | present | I | something |  |  |  | good *property* | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADJ»: agent=Pivot something=Theme |
| 2 | **flee** | present · passive |  |  |  | a instant |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Initial\_Location |

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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:** «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.

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