---
title: At the top sat a cuckoo, below hung the heavy leaden weights, and th… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: At the top sat a cuckoo, below hung the heavy leaden weights, and the pendulum with the polished disc of metal went to and fro, and said 'tick, tick.' Who acts: pendulum. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Twenty-third Evening, with its dependency tree and the 
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/114/6/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Twenty-third Evening, sentence 6

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At the top sat a cuckoo, below hung the heavy leaden weights, and the pendulum with the polished disc of metal went to and fro, and said 'tick, tick.'

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**Who acts:** pendulum · **What happens:** sit, hang, polish, go, fro, say · **To what, where:** cuckoo, top, heavy leaden weights, tick · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Twenty-third Evening. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (pendulum), 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:pg27200:114:6
# text = At the top sat a cuckoo, below hung the heavy leaden weights, and the pendulum with the polished disc of metal went to and fro, and said 'tick, tick.'
1	At	at	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	top	top	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
4	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	cuckoo	cuckoo	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
8	below	below	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
9	hung	hang	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
11	heavy	heavy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
12	leaden	leaden	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	weights	weight	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	24	punct	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	24	cc	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	pendulum	pendulum	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	24	nsubj	_	_
18	with	with	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
19	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
20	polished	polish	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	21	amod	_	_
21	disc	disc	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nmod	_	_
22	of	of	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
23	metal	metal	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	nmod	_	_
24	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	parataxis	_	_
25	to	to	ADP	IN	_	24	obl	_	_
26	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	27	cc	_	_
27	fro	fro	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	24	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
28	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	30	punct	_	_
29	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	30	cc	_	_
30	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
31	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	32	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
32	tick	tick	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	30	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
33	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	34	punct	_	_
34	tick	tick	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	32	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
35	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	32	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
36	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	32	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sit** | past |  | a cuckoo |  | the top |  |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V NP.theme PP»: agent=Agent cuckoo=Theme at top=Location |
| 2 | **hang** | past |  | the heavy leaden weights |  |  |  | below *property* | vn poison-42.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent weight=Patient |
| 3 | **polish** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn butter-9.9 «NP V NP.destination»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **go** | past | the pendulum with the polished disc of metal |  |  |  |  |  | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 5 | **fro** | infinitive | the pendulum with the polished disc of metal *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 6 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  | tick and tick |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent tick=Topic |

<!-- .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:** «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Project Gutenberg book 27200 (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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