---
title: Large black crows flew about in silence; it was as if nature slept. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Large black crows flew about in silence; it was as if nature slept. Who acts: Large black crows, silence. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Story of the Year, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Story of the Year, sentence 57

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Large black crows flew about in silence; it was as if nature slept.

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**Who acts:** Large black crows, silence · **What happens:** fly, be

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Story of the Year. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Large black crows, silence), 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:pg27200:214:57
# text = Large black crows flew about in silence; it was as if nature slept.
1	Large	large	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
2	black	black	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	crows	crow	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
4	flew	fly	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	about	about	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	in	in	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	silence	silence	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
9	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
10	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
11	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	14	mark	_	_
12	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	14	mark	_	_
13	nature	nature	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
14	slept	sleep	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fly** | past | Large black crows |  |  |  |  | about silence | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V NP.theme PP»: agent=Agent about silence=Location |
| 2 | **is** *a condition, not said to happen* | past | silence |  |  |  |  | sleep *property* | tree rules |

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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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