---
title: It was not fever, nor sickness, but old age, that had laid him low. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: It was not fever, nor sickness, but old age, that had laid him low. Who acts: jug. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Old Bachelor's Nightcap, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Old Bachelor's Nightcap, sentence 184

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It was not fever, nor sickness, but old age, that had laid him low.

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**Who acts:** jug · **What happens:** not be, lay · **To what, where:** fever, old age

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Old Bachelor's Nightcap. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (jug), 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:pg27200:128:184
# text = It was not fever, nor sickness, but old age, that had laid him low.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	fever	fever	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
6	nor	nor	CCONJ	CC	Polarity=Neg	7	cc	_	_
7	sickness	sickness	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	age	age	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
13	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	15	nsubj:pass	_	_
14	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
15	laid	lay	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	11	acl:relcl	_	_
16	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	obj	_	_
17	low	low	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	15	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is a** | past | jug | fever nor sickness |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **lay** | past · perfect · passive |  | old age |  |  |  | low *property* | vn put\_spatial-9.2 «NP V NP ADVP»: subject=Theme he=Destination |

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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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