---
title: By this time the poor birds' heads were in a whirl. — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: By this time the poor birds' heads were in a whirl. Who acts: heads. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Fox and the Pheasants, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Fox and the Pheasants, sentence 7

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By this time the poor birds' heads were in a whirl.

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**Who acts:** heads · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** whirl

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Fox and the Pheasants. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (heads), 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:pg19994:117:7
# text = By this time the poor birds' heads were in a whirl.
1	By	by	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	3	det	_	_
3	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	birds	bird	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	'	's	PART	POS	_	6	case	_	_
8	heads	head	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	nsubj	_	_
9	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	cop	_	_
10	in	in	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	whirl	whirl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | the poor birds's heads |  |  | a whirl | time |  | tree rules |

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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 Aesop for Children» by Aesop, Project Gutenberg book 19994 (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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