---
title: Was he thinking, perchance, of his fair young wife? — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Was he thinking, perchance, of his fair young wife? Who acts: eldest. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Twentieth Evening, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Twentieth Evening, sentence 8

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Was he thinking, perchance, of his fair young wife?

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**Who acts:** eldest · **What happens:** think

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Twentieth Evening. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (eldest), 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:pg27200:111:8
# text = Was he thinking, perchance, of his fair young wife?
1	Was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	thinking	think	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
5	perchance	perchance	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
8	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
9	fair	fair	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
10	young	young	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **think** *speech: other* | past · progressive | eldest *= eld* |  |  |  |  |  | vn focus-87.1-1 «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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