---
title: So she put all the birds round her and began to show them how to do… — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: So she put all the birds round her and began to show them how to do it. Who acts: magpie. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Magpie's Nest, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/42/4/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [English Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/) / [The Magpie's Nest](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/42/) / 4

# English Fairy Tales, The Magpie's Nest, sentence 4

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
So she put all the birds round her and began to show them how to do it.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** magpie · **What happens:** put, begin, show, do · **To what, where:** birds, snuff · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (magpie), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg7439:42:4
# text = So she put all the birds round her and began to show them how to do it.
1	So	so	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
2	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	put	put	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	all	all	DET	PDT	PronType=Tot	6	det:predet	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	birds	bird	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obj	_	_
7	round	round	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	obl	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
12	show	show	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	xcomp	_	_
13	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	obj	_	_
14	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	16	advmod	_	_
15	to	to	PART	TO	_	16	mark	_	_
16	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	ccomp	_	_
17	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **put** | past | magpie |  | all birds |  |  | round her *= she* | vn invest-13.5.4-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent bird=Goal |
| 2 | **begin** | past | magpie *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 3 | **show** | to-infinitive | magpie *not said here* | birds *= bird* |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent they=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 4 | **do** | to-infinitive |  | snuff |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Eventuality |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/42/3/)
- next →: [sentence 5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/42/5/)
- ↑ back to [The Magpie's Nest](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/42/)