---
title: James and Adolphus then fired their crossbows over the grave, as the… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: James and Adolphus then fired their crossbows over the grave, as they had neither guns nor cannons. Who acts: James. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Little Ida's Flowers, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Little Ida's Flowers, sentence 146

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James and Adolphus then fired their crossbows over the grave, as they had neither guns nor cannons.

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**Who acts:** James · **What happens:** fire, have · **To what, where:** crossbows, grave, guns

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Little Ida's Flowers. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (James), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg27200:5341`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg27200:73:146
# text = James and Adolphus then fired their crossbows over the grave, as they had neither guns nor cannons.
1	James	James	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
2	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
3	Adolphus	Adolphus	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	1	conj	_	_
4	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	5	advmod	_	_
5	fired	fire	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	crossbows	crossbow	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obj	_	_
8	over	over	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	grave	grave	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
12	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	14	mark	_	_
13	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
14	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	advcl	_	_
15	neither	neither	CCONJ	CC	Polarity=Neg	16	cc:preconj	_	_
16	guns	gun	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	obj	_	_
17	nor	nor	CCONJ	CC	Polarity=Neg	18	cc	_	_
18	cannons	cannon	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	conj	_	_
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fire** | past | James and Adolphus | James's crossbows |  | the grave | then |  | vn throw-17.1-1 «NP V NP PP.destinations»: agent=Agent crossbow=Theme over grave=Destination |
| 2 | **have** | past | James | guns nor cannons |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent gun=Patient |

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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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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