---
title: The first was a herring's head, which could emit light in the darkne… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: The first was a herring's head, which could emit light in the darkness. Who acts: first, head. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Old Street Lamp, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Old Street Lamp, sentence 30

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The first was a herring's head, which could emit light in the darkness.

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**Who acts:** first, head · **What happens:** be, emit · **To what, where:** head, light, darkness

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Old Street Lamp. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (first, head), 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:pg27200:133:30
# text = The first was a herring's head, which could emit light in the darkness.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	first	first	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos|NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	7	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	herring	herring	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	's	's	PART	POS	_	5	case	_	_
7	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	11	nsubj	_	_
10	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	emit	emit	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	acl:relcl	_	_
12	light	light	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
13	in	in	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	darkness	darkness	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | the first | a herring's head |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **emit** | could | a herring's head | light |  | the darkness |  |  | vn substance\_emission-43.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Source light=Theme |

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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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