---
title: What sort of a duck are you?" they all said, coming round him. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: What sort of a duck are you?" they all said, coming round him. Who acts: sort, eyes. 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 65

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What sort of a duck are you?" they all said, coming round him.

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**Who acts:** sort, eyes · **What happens:** be, say, come, sort · **To what, where:** you, duck · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (sort, eyes), 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:pg27200:201:65
# text = What sort of a duck are you?" they all said, coming round him.
1	What	what	DET	WDT	PronType=Int	2	det	_	_
2	sort	sort	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
3	of	of	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	duck	duck	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nmod	_	_
6	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
7	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	12	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
10	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
11	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	12	advmod	_	_
12	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
14	coming	come	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	12	advcl	_	_
15	round	round	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | what sort of a duck | you |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | past | eyes *= eye* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **come** *in a quote* | gerund | eyes *= eye* *not said here* |  |  |  |  | round cat | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme round he=Initial\_Location |
| 4 | **sort** |  |  | a duck |  |  |  |  | nom sort «cognition transitive»: of=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:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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