---
title: Then a little bird flies towards the grating, for birds twitter to t… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Then a little bird flies towards the grating, for birds twitter to the just as well as to the unjust. Who acts: little bird, birds. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Sunbeam and the Captive, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/186/9/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Sunbeam and the Captive, sentence 9

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Then a little bird flies towards the grating, for birds twitter to the just as well as to the unjust.

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**Who acts:** little bird, birds · **What happens:** fly, twitter · **To what, where:** grating, unjust

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Sunbeam and the Captive. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (little bird, birds), 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:pg27200:186:9
# text = Then a little bird flies towards the grating, for birds twitter to the just as well as to the unjust.
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	5	advmod	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	bird	bird	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	flies	fly	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	towards	towards	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	grating	grating	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
10	for	for	SCONJ	IN	_	12	mark	_	_
11	birds	bird	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	nsubj	_	_
12	twitter	twitter	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
13	to	to	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
15	just	just	ADV	RB	_	21	advmod	_	_
16	as	as	ADV	RB	ExtPos=CCONJ	21	cc	_	_
17	well	well	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	16	fixed	_	_
18	as	as	ADP	IN	_	16	fixed	_	_
19	to	to	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
20	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	unjust	unjust	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fly** | present | a little bird |  |  | the grating | then |  | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme towards grating=Destination |
| 2 | **twitter** | present | birds |  | the unjust |  |  |  | vn animal\_sounds-38 «NP V PP.recipient»: agent=Agent to unjust=Recipient |

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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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