---
title: The Portuguese had certainly a great flow of language," they said to… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: The Portuguese had certainly a great flow of language," they said to the little bird. " Who acts: Portuguese, others, language. 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 31

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The Portuguese had certainly a great flow of language," they said to the little bird. "

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**Who acts:** Portuguese, others, language · **What happens:** have, say, flow · **To what, where:** great flow · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (Portuguese, others, language), 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:pg27200:145:31
# text = The Portuguese had certainly a great flow of language," they said to the little bird. "
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	Portuguese	Portuguese	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	ccomp	_	_
4	certainly	certainly	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	flow	flow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
8	of	of	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	language	language	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
12	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
14	to	to	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
16	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
17	bird	bird	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
19	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | the Portuguese | a great flow of language |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent flow=Patient |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | past | others *= other* |  |  |  |  | to the little bird | vn indicate-78-1 «NP V PP.recipient that S»: agent=Pivot to bird=Experiencer clause=Topic |
| 3 | **flow** |  | language |  |  |  |  |  | nom flow «event intransitive»: of=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:** «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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