---
title: "But what am I to do, down there in the tree?" asked the soldier. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "But what am I to do, down there in the tree?" asked the soldier. Who acts: soldier. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Tinder-box, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Tinder-box, sentence 9

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"But what am I to do, down there in the tree?" asked the soldier.

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**Who acts:** soldier · **What happens:** do, ask · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Tinder-box. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (soldier), 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:pg27200:193:9
# text = "But what am I to do, down there in the tree?" asked the soldier.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
3	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	7	obj	_	_
4	am	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
5	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	16	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	down	down	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
10	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	7	advmod	_	_
11	in	in	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	tree	tree	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
16	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	soldier	soldier	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	16	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **do** *not said to happen, in a quote* | present | the soldier *= soldier* |  |  | there |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Eventuality |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | the soldier |  |  |  |  |  | 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:** «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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