---
title: Then all the birds broke out singing: — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Then all the birds broke out singing: Who acts: birds. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Sigurd, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Story of Sigurd, sentence 83

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Then all the birds broke out singing:

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**Who acts:** birds · **What happens:** break out, sing

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Sigurd. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (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:pg540:51:83
# text = Then all the birds broke out singing:
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	5	advmod	_	_
2	all	all	DET	PDT	PronType=Tot	4	det:predet	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	birds	bird	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
5	broke	break	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	out	out	ADP	RP	_	5	compound:prt	_	_
7	singing	sing	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	5	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **break out** | past | all birds |  |  |  | then |  | vn hurt-40.8.3-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Patient |
| 2 | **sing** *speech: express* | gerund | all birds *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V»: agent=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 Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 540 (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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