---
title: "They were wild birds," answered the parrot, "and totally uneducated. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: "They were wild birds," answered the parrot, "and totally uneducated. Who acts: depths, wild birds. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Clerk's Transformation, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/44/113/)

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Clerk's Transformation, sentence 113

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"They were wild birds," answered the parrot, "and totally uneducated.

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**Who acts:** depths, wild birds · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** wild birds, parrot

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Clerk's Transformation. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (depths, wild birds), 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:pg27200:44:113
# text = "They were wild birds," answered the parrot, "and totally uneducated.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
3	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	wild	wild	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	birds	bird	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
8	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	parrot	parrot	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
12	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
14	totally	totally	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
15	uneducated	uneducated	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** *in a quote* | past | depths *= depth* | wild birds |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **is a** | past | wild birds | the parrot |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **be** *in a quote* |  | wild birds *not said here* |  |  |  |  | totally *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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