---
title: The gift of laughing was given to man alone. — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The gift of laughing was given to man alone. 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/pg1597/9/29/)

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# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Shoes of Fortune, part 5, sentence 29

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The gift of laughing was given to man alone.

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**What happens:** give, gift · **To what, where:** gift, man, laughing

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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: 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:pg1597:9:29
# text = The gift of laughing was given to man alone.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	gift	gift	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
3	of	of	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	laughing	laughing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nmod	_	_
5	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux:pass	_	_
6	given	give	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
7	to	to	ADP	TO	_	8	case	_	_
8	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
9	alone	alone	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **give** | past · passive |  | the gift of laughing | man |  |  | alone *property* | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP PP.recipient»: subject=Theme to man=Recipient |
| 2 | **gift** |  |  | laughing |  |  |  |  | nom gift «possession 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:** «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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