---
title: “Where are they going to?” asked the Fir. — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Where are they going to?” asked the Fir. Who acts: horses, Fir. A sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Fir Tree, 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/pg1597/10/35/)

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# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Fir Tree, sentence 35

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“Where are they going to?” asked the Fir.

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**Who acts:** horses, Fir · **What happens:** go, ask · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Fir Tree. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (horses, Fir), 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:pg1597:10:35
# text = “Where are they going to?” asked the Fir.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Where	where	ADV	WRB	PronType=Rel	5	advmod	_	_
3	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	going	go	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	9	ccomp	_	_
6	to	to	ADP	IN	_	5	fixed	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
9	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	Fir	fir	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go** *in a quote* | present · progressive | horses *= horse* |  |  |  |  |  | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | the Fir |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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:** «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, Project Gutenberg book 1597 (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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- ← previous: [sentence 34](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/10/34/)
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- ↑ back to [The Fir Tree](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/10/)