---
title: His courage failed, and he felt as if his heart would burst. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: His courage failed, and he felt as if his heart would burst. Who acts: courage, heart. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Under the Willow-tree, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/203/26/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Under the Willow-tree, part 2, sentence 26

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His courage failed, and he felt as if his heart would burst.

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**Who acts:** courage, heart · **What happens:** fail, feel, burst

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Under the Willow-tree, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (courage, heart), 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:pg27200:203:26
# text = His courage failed, and he felt as if his heart would burst.
1	His	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	2	nmod:poss	_	_
2	courage	courage	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	failed	fail	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	felt	feel	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
8	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
9	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
10	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	heart	heart	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
12	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
13	burst	burst	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fail** | past | Knud's courage |  |  |  |  |  | vn succeed-74-3-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **feel** | past | courage |  |  |  |  |  | vn see-30.1-1 «NP V how S»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 3 | **burst** *a condition, not said to happen* | would | Knud's heart |  |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «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:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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