---
title: Shall we beat him?" they said. " — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Shall we beat him?" they said. " Who acts: we, monkeys. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Bell, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/9/53/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/) / [The Bell](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/9/) / 53

# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Bell, sentence 53

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Shall we beat him?" they said. "

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** we, monkeys · **What happens:** beat, say · **To what, where:** son · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg27200:9:53
# text = Shall we beat him?" they said. "
1	Shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
2	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	beat	beat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	ccomp	_	_
4	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
7	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
10	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **beat** | shall | we | son |  |  |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location he=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | past | monkeys *= monkey* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 52](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/9/52/)
- next →: [sentence 54](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/9/54/)
- ↑ back to [The Bell](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/9/)