---
title: He raised the lid, and out flew the three little birds. — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He raised the lid, and out flew the three little birds. Who acts: pity. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 17, 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/pg3454/17/40/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 17, sentence 40

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He raised the lid, and out flew the three little birds.

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**Who acts:** pity · **What happens:** raise, fly · **To what, where:** lid, three little birds

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 17. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (pity), 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:pg3454:17:40
# text = He raised the lid, and out flew the three little birds.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	raised	raise	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	lid	lid	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
7	out	out	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
8	flew	fly	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
10	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	12	nummod	_	_
11	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	birds	bird	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **raise** | past | pity | the lid |  |  |  |  | vn put\_direction-9.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent lid=Theme |
| 2 | **fly** | past |  | the three little birds |  |  |  | out *property* | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location bird=Theme |

<!-- .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:** «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3454 (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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