---
title: To be born in a duck's nest, in a farmyard, is of no consequence to… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: To be born in a duck's nest, in a farmyard, is of no consequence to a bird, if it is hatched from a swan's egg. 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 166

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To be born in a duck's nest, in a farmyard, is of no consequence to a bird, if it is hatched from a swan's egg.

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**What happens:** bear, be, hatch · **To what, where:** nest, consequence

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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: what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg27200:13802`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg27200:201:166
# text = To be born in a duck's nest, in a farmyard, is of no consequence to a bird, if it is hatched from a swan's egg.
1	To	to	PART	TO	_	3	mark	_	_
2	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	aux:pass	_	_
3	born	bear	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	17	csubj	_	_
4	in	in	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	duck	duck	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod:poss	_	_
7	's	's	PART	POS	_	6	case	_	_
8	nest	nest	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
10	in	in	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	farmyard	farmyard	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
14	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	17	cop	_	_
15	of	of	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	17	det	_	_
17	consequence	consequence	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
18	to	to	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
19	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	bird	bird	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nmod	_	_
21	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	25	punct	_	_
22	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	25	mark	_	_
23	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	25	nsubj:pass	_	_
24	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	25	aux:pass	_	_
25	hatched	hatch	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	17	advcl	_	_
26	from	from	ADP	IN	_	30	case	_	_
27	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	28	det	_	_
28	swan	swan	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	30	nmod:poss	_	_
29	's	's	PART	POS	_	28	case	_	_
30	egg	egg	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	25	obl	_	_
31	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	17	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **bear** | to-infinitive · passive |  |  |  | a duck's nest |  | in a farmyard | vn admire-31.2 «NP V that S» |
| 2 | **is** | present |  |  |  |  |  | of no consequence; to a bird | tree rules |
| 3 | **hatch** *a condition, not said to happen* | present · passive |  | consequence |  |  |  | from a swan's egg | vn grow-26.2.1 «NP V NP.product PP.patient»: subject=Product from egg=Patient |

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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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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