---
title: Inside the lantern there was only the flickering candle. — In Ghostly Japan · tree and pragmatics
description: Inside the lantern there was only the flickering candle. A sentence of «In Ghostly Japan» by Lafcadio Hearn, Story of a Tengu[1], with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# In Ghostly Japan, Story of a Tengu\[1\], sentence 108

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Inside the lantern there was only the flickering candle.

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**What happens:** be, flicker · **To what, where:** flickering candle, lantern

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This is a sentence of «In Ghostly Japan» by Lafcadio Hearn, Story of a Tengu\[1\]. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg8128:27:109
# text = Inside the lantern there was only the flickering candle.
1	Inside	inside	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	lantern	lantern	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
4	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	5	expl	_	_
5	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	only	only	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	flickering	flicker	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	9	amod	_	_
9	candle	candle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past |  | the flickering candle |  | the lantern; there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme inside lantern=Location |
| 2 | **flicker** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn light\_emission-43.1 «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:** «In Ghostly Japan» by Lafcadio Hearn, Project Gutenberg book 8128 (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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