---
title: He flung himself on his back and watched the birds twittering and ch… — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He flung himself on his back and watched the birds twittering and chattering in the trees above him. Who acts: Nur, birds. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Story Of The King Who Would Be Stronger Than Fate, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Brown Fairy Book, Story Of The King Who Would Be Stronger Than Fate, sentence 131

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He flung himself on his back and watched the birds twittering and chattering in the trees above him.

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**Who acts:** Nur, birds · **What happens:** fling, watch, twitter, chatter · **To what, where:** Nur, back, birds, trees

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This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Story Of The King Who Would Be Stronger Than Fate. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Nur, 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:pg3282:33:131
# text = He flung himself on his back and watched the birds twittering and chattering in the trees above him.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	flung	fling	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	himself	himself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	2	obj	_	_
4	on	on	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	back	back	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	watched	watch	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	birds	bird	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obj	_	_
11	twittering	twitter	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	10	acl	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	chattering	chatter	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	11	conj	_	_
14	in	in	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	trees	tree	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	obl	_	_
17	above	above	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fling** | past | Nur | Nur |  | Nur's back |  |  | vn throw-17.1-1 «NP V NP PP.destinations»: agent=Agent himself=Theme on back=Destination |
| 2 | **watch** | past | Nur *not said here* | the birds |  |  |  |  | vn assessment-34.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent bird=Theme |
| 3 | **twitter** | gerund | the birds *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn animal\_sounds-38 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **chatter** | gerund | the birds *not said here* |  |  | the trees above Nur |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in tree=Location |

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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:** «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3282 (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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