---
title: And the boys whistled and the soldiers presented arms. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: And the boys whistled and the soldiers presented arms. Who acts: boys, soldiers. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Tinder-box, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/46/144/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Tinder-box, sentence 144

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And the boys whistled and the soldiers presented arms.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** boys, soldiers · **What happens:** whistle, present · **To what, where:** arms

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Tinder-box. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (boys, soldiers), 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:pg640:46:144
# text = And the boys whistled and the soldiers presented arms.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	boys	boy	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
4	whistled	whistle	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	soldiers	soldier	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nsubj	_	_
8	presented	present	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
9	arms	arm	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **whistle** | past | the boys |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **present** | past | the soldiers | arms |  |  |  |  | vn fulfilling-13.4.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent arm=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:** «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 640 (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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