---
title: The owl beat the drum, the crickets whistled and the grasshoppers pl… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: The owl beat the drum, the crickets whistled and the grasshoppers played the mouth-organ. Who acts: owl, crickets, grasshoppers. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Travelling Companion, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Travelling Companion, part 3, sentence 44

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The owl beat the drum, the crickets whistled and the grasshoppers played the mouth-organ.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** owl, crickets, grasshoppers · **What happens:** beat, whistle, play · **To what, where:** drum, mouth organ

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Travelling Companion, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (owl, crickets, grasshoppers), 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:pg27200:198:44
# text = The owl beat the drum, the crickets whistled and the grasshoppers played the mouth-organ.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	owl	owl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	beat	beat	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	drum	drum	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	crickets	cricket	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	nsubj	_	_
9	whistled	whistle	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	grasshoppers	grasshopper	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	nsubj	_	_
13	played	play	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	conj	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
15	mouth	mouth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	organ	organ	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **beat** | past | the owl | the drum |  |  |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location drum=Theme |
| 2 | **whistle** | past | the crickets |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **play** | past | the grasshoppers | the mouth organ |  |  |  |  | vn use-105.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent organ=Theme |

<!-- .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.

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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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