---
title: But for him, the house would have been burned down. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: But for him, the house would have been burned down. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Porter's Son, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Porter's Son, part 1, sentence 23

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But for him, the house would have been burned down.

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**What happens:** burn down · **To what, where:** George

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Porter's Son, part 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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**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:pg27200:146:23
# text = But for him, the house would have been burned down.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
2	for	for	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
3	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj:pass	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	house	house	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj:pass	_	_
7	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
8	have	have	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	aux	_	_
9	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	10	aux:pass	_	_
10	burned	burn	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
11	down	down	ADP	RP	_	10	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **burn down** | would · perfect · passive |  | George |  |  |  |  | vn light\_emission-43.1 «NP V NP.theme»: subject=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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