---
title: The boy could climb well, and had always to bring her down the bird'… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: The boy could climb well, and had always to bring her down the bird's nests. Who acts: boy. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Poultry Meg's Family, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Poultry Meg's Family, sentence 20

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The boy could climb well, and had always to bring her down the bird's nests.

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**Who acts:** boy · **What happens:** climb, have, bring down · **To what, where:** nests, peasant

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Poultry Meg's Family. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (boy), 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:pg27200:149:20
# text = The boy could climb well, and had always to bring her down the bird's nests.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	climb	climb	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	well	well	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	4	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
9	always	always	ADV	RB	PronType=Tot	8	advmod	_	_
10	to	to	PART	TO	_	11	mark	_	_
11	bring	bring	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	xcomp	_	_
12	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	obj	_	_
13	down	down	ADP	RP	_	11	compound:prt	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	bird	bird	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	's	's	PART	POS	_	15	case	_	_
17	nests	nest	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **climb** | could | the boy |  |  |  |  | well *property* | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **have** | past | the boy *not said here* |  |  |  |  | always *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **bring down** | to-infinitive | the boy *not said here* | the bird's nests | peasant |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3-1 «NP V NP NP»: agent=Agent she=Destination nest=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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