---
title: Then all the ducks came crowding round the little dead bird. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Then all the ducks came crowding round the little dead bird. Who acts: ducks. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Portuguese Duck, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Portuguese Duck, sentence 110

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Then all the ducks came crowding round the little dead bird.

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**Who acts:** ducks · **What happens:** come, crowd

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Portuguese Duck. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (ducks), 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:pg27200:145:110
# text = Then all the ducks came crowding round the little dead bird.
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	5	advmod	_	_
2	all	all	DET	PDT	PronType=Tot	4	det:predet	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	ducks	duck	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
5	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	crowding	crowd	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	5	xcomp	_	_
7	round	round	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
9	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
10	dead	dead	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	bird	bird	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come** | past | all ducks |  |  |  | then |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **crowd** | gerund | all ducks *not said here* |  |  |  |  | round the little dead bird | vn spray-9.7-1-1 «NP V PP.destination»: agent=Theme round bird=Destination |

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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:** «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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