---
title: ‘What has a bird, in spite of all his singing, in the winter-time? — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘What has a bird, in spite of all his singing, in the winter-time? Who acts: man. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Witch in the Stone Boat(31), with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Witch in the Stone Boat(31), sentence 162

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘What has a bird, in spite of all his singing, in the winter-time?

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**Who acts:** man · **What happens:** have, spite, sing · **To what, where:** bird, spite, singing

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Witch in the Stone Boat(31). The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man), 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:pg640:47:162
# text = ‘What has a bird, in spite of all his singing, in the winter-time?
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	3	nsubj	_	_
3	has	have	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	bird	bird	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	in	in	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	spite	spite	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
9	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
10	all	all	DET	PDT	PronType=Tot	12	det:predet	_	_
11	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	singing	singing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
14	in	in	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
16	winter	winter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	16	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | present |  | a bird |  | spite of man's singing |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent bird=Patient |
| 2 | **spite** |  |  | man's singing |  |  |  |  | nom spite «feeling transitive»: of=patient |
| 3 | **sing** |  | man |  |  |  |  |  | nom singing «act transitive»: poss=agent |

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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 Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 640 (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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