---
title: “Oh! those were uncouth birds,” answered the Parrot. — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Oh! those were uncouth birds,” answered the Parrot. Who acts: uncouth birds. A sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Shoes of Fortune, part 5, 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/pg1597/9/8/)

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# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Shoes of Fortune, part 5, sentence 8

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“Oh! those were uncouth birds,” answered the Parrot.

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**Who acts:** uncouth birds · **What happens:** be, answer · **To what, where:** uncouth birds, Parrot · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Shoes of Fortune, part 5. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (uncouth birds), 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:pg1597:9:8
# text = “Oh! those were uncouth birds,” answered the Parrot.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Oh	oh	INTJ	UH	_	7	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
4	those	that	DET	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	7	det	_	_
5	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
6	uncouth	uncouth	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	birds	bird	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
10	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	Parrot	parrot	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** *in a quote* | past |  | that uncouth birds |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **answer** *speech: express* | past | that uncouth birds |  | the Parrot |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent parrot=Eventuality |

<!-- .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:** «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, Project Gutenberg book 1597 (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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- ↑ back to [The Shoes of Fortune, part 5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/9/)