---
title: Was it really a ghostly apparition, or a fever dream? — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Was it really a ghostly apparition, or a fever dream? Who acts: mountain. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, XIII. At the Mill, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, XIII. At the Mill, sentence 9

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Was it really a ghostly apparition, or a fever dream?

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**Who acts:** mountain · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** ghostly apparition

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, XIII. At the Mill. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (mountain), 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:pg27200:64:9
# text = Was it really a ghostly apparition, or a fever dream?
1	Was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
2	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
3	really	really	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	ghostly	ghostly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	apparition	apparition	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
8	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	fever	fever	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	compound	_	_
11	dream	dream	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | mountain | a ghostly apparition or a fever dream |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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