---
title: The swans alighted quite close to her and flapped their great white… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: The swans alighted quite close to her and flapped their great white wings. Who acts: swans. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Wild Swans, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Wild Swans, part 1, sentence 87

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The swans alighted quite close to her and flapped their great white wings.

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**Who acts:** swans · **What happens:** alight, flap · **To what, where:** great white wings

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Wild Swans, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (swans), 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:pg27200:208:87
# text = The swans alighted quite close to her and flapped their great white wings.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	swans	swan	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	nsubj	_	_
3	alighted	alight	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	9	parataxis	_	_
4	quite	quite	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	close	close	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	xcomp	_	_
6	to	to	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	obl	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	flapped	flap	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
11	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
12	white	white	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	wings	wing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **alight** | participle |  |  |  |  |  | close *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **flap** | past | the swans | swans's great white wings |  |  |  |  | vn crane-40.3.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent wing=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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