---
title: Number two was a piece of rotten wood, which also shines in the dark. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Number two was a piece of rotten wood, which also shines in the dark. Who acts: Number, piece. 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 32

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Number two was a piece of rotten wood, which also shines in the dark.

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**Who acts:** Number, piece · **What happens:** be, shine · **To what, where:** piece, dark

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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 (Number, piece), 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:pg27200:133:32
# text = Number two was a piece of rotten wood, which also shines in the dark.
1	Number	number	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
2	two	two	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	1	nummod	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	piece	piece	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	rotten	rotten	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	wood	wood	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
10	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	12	nsubj	_	_
11	also	also	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	shines	shine	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	parataxis	_	_
13	in	in	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	dark	dark	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | Number | a piece |  |  |  | of rotten wood | tree rules |
| 2 | **shine** | present | a piece |  |  | the dark |  |  | vn light\_emission-43.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in dark=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:** «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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