---
title: For the magpie is the cleverest bird of all at building nests. — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: For the magpie is the cleverest bird of all at building 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 3

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For the magpie is the cleverest bird of all at building nests.

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**What happens:** be · **To what, where:** cleverest bird

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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: 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:pg7439:42:3
# text = For the magpie is the cleverest bird of all at building nests.
1	For	for	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	magpie	magpie	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
4	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	cleverest	clever	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	7	amod	_	_
7	bird	bird	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
8	of	of	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	7	nmod	_	_
10	at	at	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	building	building	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	compound	_	_
12	nests	nest	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present |  | the cleverest bird |  |  |  | for the magpie; of all | tree rules |

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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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