---
title: Like a stricken, fainting man, he tottered down the staircase and ou… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Like a stricken, fainting man, he tottered down the staircase and out into the street. Who acts: face. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Psyche, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Psyche, sentence 92

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Like a stricken, fainting man, he tottered down the staircase and out into the street.

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**Who acts:** face · **What happens:** faint, totter · **To what, where:** staircase

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Psyche. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (face), 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:pg27200:151:92
# text = Like a stricken, fainting man, he tottered down the staircase and out into the street.
1	Like	like	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
3	stricken	stricken	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
5	fainting	faint	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	6	amod	_	_
6	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	tottered	totter	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	down	down	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	staircase	staircase	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
14	out	out	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	_
15	into	into	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	street	street	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **faint** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn change\_bodily\_state-40.8.4 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 2 | **totter** | past | face |  |  | the staircase and the street |  | like a stricken fainting man | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme down staircase=Trajectory |

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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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