---
title: “That suits me,” cried the starling, and off it flew; and very comfo… — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “That suits me,” cried the starling, and off it flew; and very comfortable nests have starlings. Who acts: That, starling, comfortable nests. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Magpie's Nest, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, The Magpie's Nest, sentence 14

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“That suits me,” cried the starling, and off it flew; and very comfortable nests have starlings.

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**Who acts:** That, starling, comfortable nests · **What happens:** suit, cry, fly, have · **To what, where:** starling, starlings · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Magpie's Nest. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (That, starling, comfortable nests), 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:pg7439:42:14
# text = “That suits me,” cried the starling, and off it flew; and very comfortable nests have starlings.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	That	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	3	nsubj	_	_
3	suits	suit	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
7	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	advcl	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	starling	starling	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
12	off	off	ADP	IN	_	14	mark	_	_
13	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
14	flew	fly	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	20	cc	_	_
17	very	very	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	_
18	comfortable	comfortable	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	amod	_	_
19	nests	nest	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	nsubj	_	_
20	have	have	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
21	starlings	starling	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **suit** *in a quote* | present | That | the starling *= starling* |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **cry** *speech: express* | past | the starling |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **fly** | past | starling |  |  |  |  |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **have** | present | comfortable nests | starlings |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent starling=Patient |

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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:** «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7439 (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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