---
title: They are digging passages beneath the earth, and the noise is like t… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: They are digging passages beneath the earth, and the noise is like the reports of cannons. Who acts: men, noise. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, IX. the Ice Maiden, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, IX. the Ice Maiden, sentence 8

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They are digging passages beneath the earth, and the noise is like the reports of cannons.

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**Who acts:** men, noise · **What happens:** dig, be · **To what, where:** passages, earth

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, IX. the Ice Maiden. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (men, noise), 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:pg27200:60:8
# text = They are digging passages beneath the earth, and the noise is like the reports of cannons.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	digging	dig	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
4	passages	passage	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obj	_	_
5	beneath	beneath	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	earth	earth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	noise	noise	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
12	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	15	cop	_	_
13	like	like	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	reports	report	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	_
16	of	of	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	cannons	cannon	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **dig** | present · progressive | men *= man* | passages |  | the earth |  |  | vn hunt-35.1 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent passage=Theme beneath earth=Location |
| 2 | **is** | present | the noise |  |  |  |  | like the reports; of cannons | tree rules |

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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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