---
title: "Life is a gracious gift from God, almost too great a gift for us to… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "Life is a gracious gift from God, almost too great a gift for us to appreciate!" said the young wife. " Who acts: Life, us, young wife. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, A Story From the Sand-hills, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/158/12/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, A Story From the Sand-hills, part 1, sentence 12

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"Life is a gracious gift from God, almost too great a gift for us to appreciate!" said the young wife. "

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**Who acts:** Life, us, young wife · **What happens:** be, appreciate, say · **To what, where:** gracious gift, great gift · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, A Story From the Sand-hills, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Life, us, young wife), 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:pg27200:158:12
# text = "Life is a gracious gift from God, almost too great a gift for us to appreciate!" said the young wife. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Life	life	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	gracious	gracious	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	gift	gift	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	nsubj	_	_
7	from	from	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	God	God	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
10	almost	almost	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
11	too	too	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	gift	gift	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	conj	_	_
15	for	for	SCONJ	IN	_	18	mark	_	_
16	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
17	to	to	PART	TO	_	18	mark	_	_
18	appreciate	appreciate	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
21	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
22	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	24	det	_	_
23	young	young	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	24	amod	_	_
24	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	24	punct	_	_
26	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	24	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## 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 gracious gift and a great gift |  |  |  | from God | tree rules |
| 2 | **appreciate** *in a quote* | to-infinitive | us | a great gift *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1-1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute |
| 3 | **say** *speech: express* | past | the young wife |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .note -->
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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