---
title: "'Let us act a play,' said they all. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "'Let us act a play,' said they all. Who acts: us. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Flying Trunk, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Flying Trunk, sentence 79

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"'Let us act a play,' said they all.

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**Who acts:** us · **What happens:** let, act, say · **To what, where:** us, play · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Flying Trunk. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (us), 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:pg27200:35:79
# text = "'Let us act a play,' said they all.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	Let	let	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	ccomp	_	_
4	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	_
5	act	act	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	xcomp	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	play	play	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	ccomp	_	_
12	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	11	det	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **let** *in a quote* | infinitive |  | us |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **act** *in a quote* | infinitive | us *not said here* | a play |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1-1 «NP V PP.predicate»: agent=Agent play=Eventuality |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | past |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that 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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