---
title: How sweetly they sing there; it is quite a pleasure to listen to them! — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: How sweetly they sing there; it is quite a pleasure to listen to them! Who acts: trees. 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 7

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How sweetly they sing there; it is quite a pleasure to listen to them!

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**Who acts:** trees · **What happens:** sing, be, listen · **To what, where:** pleasure, trees

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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 (trees), 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:pg27200:145:7
# text = How sweetly they sing there; it is quite a pleasure to listen to them!
1	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	2	advmod	_	_
2	sweetly	sweetly	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
3	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	sing	sing	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	advcl	_	_
5	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	4	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	4	punct	_	_
7	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	expl	_	_
8	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
9	quite	quite	DET	PDT	PronType=Ind	11	det:predet	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	pleasure	pleasure	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
13	listen	listen	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	csubj	_	_
14	to	to	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sing** *speech: express* | present | trees *= tree* |  |  | there |  | sweetly *property* | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **is a** | present |  | quite pleasure |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **listen** | to-infinitive |  |  | trees *= tree* |  |  |  | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent to they=Theme |

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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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