---
title: From a thicket close by came three beautiful white swans, rustling t… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: From a thicket close by came three beautiful white swans, rustling their feathers, and swimming lightly over the smooth water. Who acts: thicket. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Ugly Duckling, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Ugly Duckling, sentence 158

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From a thicket close by came three beautiful white swans, rustling their feathers, and swimming lightly over the smooth water.

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**Who acts:** thicket · **What happens:** come, rustle, swim · **To what, where:** three beautiful white swans, feathers, smooth water

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Ugly Duckling. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (thicket), 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:pg27200:201:158
# text = From a thicket close by came three beautiful white swans, rustling their feathers, and swimming lightly over the smooth water.
1	From	from	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	thicket	thicket	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
4	close	close	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
5	by	by	ADP	IN	_	4	fixed	_	_
6	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	10	nummod	_	_
8	beautiful	beautiful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
9	white	white	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	swans	swan	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
12	rustling	rustle	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	6	advcl	_	_
13	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	feathers	feather	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
17	swimming	swim	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	12	conj	_	_
18	lightly	lightly	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	_
19	over	over	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
20	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
21	smooth	smooth	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	22	amod	_	_
22	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come** | past | a thicket | three beautiful white swans |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location swan=Theme |
| 2 | **rustle** | gerund | a thicket *not said here* | swans's feathers |  |  |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location feather=Theme |
| 3 | **swim** | gerund | a thicket *not said here* |  |  | the smooth water |  | lightly *property* | vn run-51.3.2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme over water=Trajectory |

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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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