---
title: Thus several years passed by, and his love became quite old. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Thus several years passed by, and his love became quite old. Who acts: several years, love, boy. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Top and Ball, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Top and Ball, sentence 29

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Thus several years passed by, and his love became quite old.

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**Who acts:** several years, love, boy · **What happens:** pass by, become, love

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Top and Ball. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (several years, love, boy), 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:pg27200:195:29
# text = Thus several years passed by, and his love became quite old.
1	Thus	thus	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
2	several	several	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	years	year	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
4	passed	pass	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	by	by	ADP	IN	_	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
8	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	love	love	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
10	became	become	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
11	quite	quite	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pass by** | participle | several years |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **become** | past | boy's love |  |  |  |  | old *property* | vn become-109.1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient |
| 3 | **love** |  | boy |  |  |  |  |  | nom love «feeling transitive»: poss=agent |

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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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