---
title: Before the gate soldiers were marching, blowing trumpets and beating… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Before the gate soldiers were marching, blowing trumpets and beating drums. Who acts: gate soldiers. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of the Fisherman and His Wife, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Story of the Fisherman and His Wife, sentence 130

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Before the gate soldiers were marching, blowing trumpets and beating drums.

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**Who acts:** gate soldiers · **What happens:** march, blow, beat · **To what, where:** trumpets, drums

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of the Fisherman and His Wife. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (gate 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:pg7277:54:130
# text = Before the gate soldiers were marching, blowing trumpets and beating drums.
1	Before	before	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	gate	gate	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	_
4	soldiers	soldier	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nsubj	_	_
5	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
6	marching	march	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
8	blowing	blow	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	6	conj	_	_
9	trumpets	trumpet	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obj	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	beating	beat	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	6	conj	_	_
12	drums	drum	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **march** | past · progressive | the gate soldiers |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **blow** | gerund | the gate soldiers *not said here* | trumpets |  |  |  |  | vn split-23.2 «NP V NP apart»: agent=Agent trumpet=Patient |
| 3 | **beat** | gerund | the gate soldiers *not said here* | drums |  |  |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location drum=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 Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 7277 (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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