---
title: I shall lay him in a black coffin, place it on my head, and fly away… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: I shall lay him in a black coffin, place it on my head, and fly away with it beyond the stars. Who acts: I, place. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Garden of Paradise, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Garden of Paradise, sentence 261

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I shall lay him in a black coffin, place it on my head, and fly away with it beyond the stars.

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**Who acts:** I, place · **What happens:** lay, place, fly away · **To what, where:** man, black coffin, stars

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Garden of Paradise. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, place), 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:pg27200:140:261
# text = I shall lay him in a black coffin, place it on my head, and fly away with it beyond the stars.
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	lay	lay	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	_
5	in	in	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	black	black	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	coffin	coffin	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
10	place	place	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	conj	_	_
11	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
12	on	on	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
17	fly	fly	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	_
18	away	away	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	_
19	with	with	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
20	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	obl	_	_
21	beyond	beyond	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
22	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	23	det	_	_
23	stars	star	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	17	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **lay** | shall | I | man |  | a black coffin and place |  | on my head | vn put\_spatial-9.2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent he=Theme in coffin=Destination |
| 2 | **place** |  | place |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **fly away** | infinitive | I *not said here* |  |  | the stars |  | with place; away *property* | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme beyond star=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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