---
title: The lady-birds, with red and black shells on their backs, and delica… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: The lady-birds, with red and black shells on their backs, and delicate wings, were flying about, and one of them said, "Is it not sweet and lovely here? Who acts: lady birds, one, back. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Beetle Who Went on His Travels, with
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Beetle Who Went on His Travels, sentence 22

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The lady-birds, with red and black shells on their backs, and delicate wings, were flying about, and one of them said, "Is it not sweet and lovely here?

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**Who acts:** lady birds, one, back · **What happens:** fly, say, not be, be · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Beetle Who Went on His Travels. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (lady birds, one, back), 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:pg27200:476`): 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:pg27200:8:22
# text = The lady-birds, with red and black shells on their backs, and delicate wings, were flying about, and one of them said, "Is it not sweet and lovely here?
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	lady	lady	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	_
3	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	2	punct	_	_
4	birds	bird	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	nsubj	_	_
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
6	with	with	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
7	red	red	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	black	black	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	conj	_	_
10	shells	shell	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nmod	_	_
11	on	on	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	backs	back	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nmod	_	_
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
16	delicate	delicate	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
17	wings	wing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	conj	_	_
18	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
19	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	20	aux	_	_
20	flying	fly	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
21	about	about	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	_
22	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	27	punct	_	_
23	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	27	cc	_	_
24	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	27	nsubj	_	_
25	of	of	ADP	IN	_	26	case	_	_
26	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	24	nmod	_	_
27	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	20	conj	_	_
28	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	27	punct	_	_
29	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	33	punct	_	_
30	Is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	33	cop	_	_
31	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	33	nsubj	_	_
32	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	33	advmod	_	_
33	sweet	sweet	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	27	ccomp	_	_
34	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	35	cc	_	_
35	lovely	lovely	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	33	conj	_	_
36	here	here	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	33	advmod	_	_
37	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	33	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fly** | past · progressive | lady birds with red shells on birds's backs and delicate wings |  |  |  |  | about *property* | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: ask* | past | one of birds |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **not** **is** *in a quote* | present | back |  |  | here |  | sweet *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **be** *in a quote* |  | back *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

<!-- .note -->
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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