---
title: At about noonday they saw a beautiful snow-white bird sitting upon a… — Grimm's Fairy Stories · tree and pragmatics
description: At about noonday they saw a beautiful snow-white bird sitting upon a bough, which sang so sweetly that they stood still and listened to it. Who acts: wood, beautiful snow white bird, bough. A sentence of «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, Hansel and Grethel, with its dependency tree and the pra
---

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# Grimm's Fairy Stories, Hansel and Grethel, sentence 58

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At about noonday they saw a beautiful snow-white bird sitting upon a bough, which sang so sweetly that they stood still and listened to it.

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**Who acts:** wood, beautiful snow white bird, bough · **What happens:** see, sit, sing, stand, listen · **To what, where:** beautiful snow white bird, noonday, bough

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This is a sentence of «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, Hansel and Grethel. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (wood, beautiful snow white bird, bough), 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:pg11027:8:58
# text = At about noonday they saw a beautiful snow-white bird sitting upon a bough, which sang so sweetly that they stood still and listened to it.
1	At	at	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	about	about	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
3	noonday	noonday	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
4	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	saw	see	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
7	beautiful	beautiful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
8	snow	snow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	white	white	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	bird	bird	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
12	sitting	sit	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	11	acl	_	_
13	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	bough	bough	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
17	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	18	nsubj	_	_
18	sang	sing	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	acl:relcl	_	_
19	so	so	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	_
20	sweetly	sweetly	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	_
21	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	23	mark	_	_
22	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	23	nsubj	_	_
23	stood	stand	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	18	advcl	_	_
24	still	still	ADV	RB	_	23	advmod	_	_
25	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	26	cc	_	_
26	listened	listen	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	23	conj	_	_
27	to	to	ADP	IN	_	28	case	_	_
28	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	26	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
29	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **see** | past | wood | a beautiful snow white bird |  | noonday |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer bird=Stimulus |
| 2 | **sit** | gerund | a beautiful snow white bird *not said here* |  |  | a bough |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent upon bough=Location |
| 3 | **sing** *speech: express* | past | a bough |  |  |  |  | sweetly *property* | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **stand** | past | wood |  |  |  | still |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 5 | **listen** | past | wood *not said here* |  | bough |  |  |  | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent to it=Theme |

<!-- .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.

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**Text:** «Grimm's Fairy Stories» by Jacob Grimm, Project Gutenberg book 11027 (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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