---
title: It was a beautiful evening, and the birds were singing in all the br… — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: It was a beautiful evening, and the birds were singing in all the branches. Who acts: wood, birds. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 8, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 8, sentence 31

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It was a beautiful evening, and the birds were singing in all the branches.

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**Who acts:** wood, birds · **What happens:** be, sing · **To what, where:** beautiful evening, branches

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 8. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (wood, 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:pg3454:8:31
# text = It was a beautiful evening, and the birds were singing in all the branches.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	beautiful	beautiful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	evening	evening	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	birds	bird	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	nsubj	_	_
10	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	singing	sing	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	5	acl	_	_
12	in	in	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
13	all	all	DET	PDT	PronType=Tot	15	det:predet	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	branches	branch	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | wood | a beautiful evening |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **sing** *speech: express* | past · progressive | the birds | a beautiful evening *not said here* |  | all branches |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location evening=Theme |

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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 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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