---
title: "Life is a shadow that flits away In a night of darkness and woe." — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "Life is a shadow that flits away In a night of darkness and woe." Who acts: Life, shadow. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Philosopher's Stone, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Philosopher's Stone, sentence 202

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"Life is a shadow that flits away In a night of darkness and woe."

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**Who acts:** Life, shadow · **What happens:** be, flit away · **To what, where:** shadow

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Philosopher's Stone. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Life, shadow), 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:pg27200:143:202
# text = "Life is a shadow that flits away In a night of darkness and woe."
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Life	life	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	shadow	shadow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
6	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	7	nsubj	_	_
7	flits	flit	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	acl:relcl	_	_
8	away	away	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
9	In	in	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
12	of	of	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	darkness	darkness	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
15	woe	woe	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	"	"	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** *in a quote* | present | Life | a shadow |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **flit away** *in a quote* | present | a shadow |  |  |  | night | away *property* | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V»: agent=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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