---
title: The soldiers fired off cannons, and the boys let off crackers. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: The soldiers fired off cannons, and the boys let off crackers. Who acts: soldiers, boys. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Travelling Companion, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Travelling Companion, part 3, sentence 71

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The soldiers fired off cannons, and the boys let off crackers.

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**Who acts:** soldiers, boys · **What happens:** fire off, let off · **To what, where:** cannons, crackers

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Travelling Companion, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (soldiers, boys), 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:pg27200:198:71
# text = The soldiers fired off cannons, and the boys let off crackers.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	soldiers	soldier	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	fired	fire	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	off	off	ADP	RP	_	3	compound:prt	_	_
5	cannons	cannon	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	boys	boy	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nsubj	_	_
10	let	let	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
11	off	off	ADP	RP	_	10	compound:prt	_	_
12	crackers	cracker	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fire off** | past | the soldiers | cannons |  |  |  |  | vn throw-17.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent cannon=Theme |
| 2 | **let off** | present | the boys | crackers |  |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent cracker=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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