---
title: "What's that the birdie sings?" said the young prince. — More English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: "What's that the birdie sings?" said the young prince. Who acts: birdie, young prince. A sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 15, 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/pg14241/29/2/)

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# More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 15, sentence 2

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"What's that the birdie sings?" said the young prince.

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**Who acts:** birdie, young prince · **What happens:** be, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 15. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (birdie, young prince), 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:pg14241:29:2
# text = "What's that the birdie sings?" said the young prince.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	's	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
4	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	birdie	birdie	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
7	sings	sing	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	parataxis	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	young	young	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	prince	prince	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** *speech: express* *in a quote* | present | the birdie |  |  |  |  | sing *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: ask* | past | the young prince |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

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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:** «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 14241 (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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