---
title: I wish I were lying on one of the highest shelves." — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: I wish I were lying on one of the highest shelves." Who acts: I. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Eventful Moment--a Most Unusual Journey, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Eventful Moment--a Most Unusual Journey, sentence 60

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I wish I were lying on one of the highest shelves."

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** wish, lie · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Eventful Moment--a Most Unusual Journey. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), 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:pg27200:43:60
# text = I wish I were lying on one of the highest shelves."
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	wish	wish	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
4	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	lying	lie	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	2	ccomp	_	_
6	on	on	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	5	obl	_	_
8	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	highest	high	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	11	amod	_	_
11	shelves	shelf	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wish** | present | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn wish-62 «NP V for NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 2 | **lie** | past · progressive | I |  |  |  |  | on one of the highest shelves | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent on one=Location |

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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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