---
title: At last the magpie heard this just as she was putting a twig across. — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: At last the magpie heard this just as she was putting a twig across. Who acts: last magpie, magpie. 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 17

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At last the magpie heard this just as she was putting a twig across.

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**Who acts:** last magpie, magpie · **What happens:** hear, put · **To what, where:** this, twig · **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 (last magpie, magpie), 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:pg7439:42:17
# text = At last the magpie heard this just as she was putting a twig across.
1	At	at	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	last	last	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	magpie	magpie	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	heard	hear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	5	obj	_	_
7	just	just	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
8	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
9	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
10	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	putting	put	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	5	ccomp	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	twig	twig	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
14	across	across	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hear** | past | the last magpie | this |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **put** | past · progressive | magpie | a twig |  |  |  | across *property* | vn invest-13.5.4-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent twig=Goal |

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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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