---
title: The hens clucked, and the cocks crowed, and the ducks waddled to and… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: The hens clucked, and the cocks crowed, and the ducks waddled to and fro, and said, "Quack, quack!" Who acts: hens, cocks, ducks. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Porter's Son, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/147/75/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/) / [The Porter's Son, part 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/147/) / 75

# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Porter's Son, part 2, sentence 75

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The hens clucked, and the cocks crowed, and the ducks waddled to and fro, and said, "Quack, quack!"

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** hens, cocks, ducks · **What happens:** cluck, crow, waddle, fro, say · **To what, where:** Quack · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Porter's Son, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (hens, cocks, ducks), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg27200:147:75
# text = The hens clucked, and the cocks crowed, and the ducks waddled to and fro, and said, "Quack, quack!"
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	hens	hen	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	clucked	cluck	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	cocks	cock	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nsubj	_	_
8	crowed	crow	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	ducks	duck	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	nsubj	_	_
13	waddled	waddle	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
14	to	to	ADP	IN	_	13	obl	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
16	fro	fro	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
18	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
19	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	22	punct	_	_
21	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	22	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	Quack	quack	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	24	punct	_	_
24	quack	quack	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	22	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	22	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
26	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	22	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **cluck** | past | the hens |  |  |  |  |  | vn animal\_sounds-38 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **crow** | past | the cocks |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **waddle** | past | the ducks |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **fro** | infinitive | the ducks *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 5 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | the hens *not said here* | Quack and quack |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent quack=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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 74](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/147/74/)
- next →: [sentence 76](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/147/76/)
- ↑ back to [The Porter's Son, part 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/147/)