---
title: "What happens to man," asked the wise man of himself, "when touched… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "What happens to man," asked the wise man of himself, "when touched by the angel of death? Who acts: wise man. 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 23

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"What happens to man," asked the wise man of himself, "when touched by the angel of death?

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**Who acts:** wise man · **What happens:** happen, ask, touch · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (wise man), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg27200:9151`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg27200:143:23
# text = "What happens to man," asked the wise man of himself, "when touched by the angel of death?
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	_
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	3	nsubj	_	_
3	happens	happen	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	ccomp	_	_
4	to	to	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
7	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
8	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	wise	wise	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
12	of	of	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	himself	himself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	8	obl	_	_
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
15	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	17	punct	_	_
16	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	17	advmod	_	_
17	touched	touch	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	3	advcl	_	_
18	by	by	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
19	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	angel	angel	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obl:agent	_	_
21	of	of	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
22	death	death	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	nmod	_	_
23	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **happen** *in a quote* | present |  |  |  |  |  | to man | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | the wise man |  |  |  |  | of man | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V PP.recipient how S»: agent=Agent of himself=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 3 | **touch** *in a quote* | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn contiguous\_location-47.8-1 «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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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