---
title: One night there flew over the city a little Swallow. — The Happy Prince, and Other Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: One night there flew over the city a little Swallow. A sentence of «The Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Opening, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Happy Prince, and Other Tales, Opening, part 1, sentence 26

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One night there flew over the city a little Swallow.

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**What happens:** fly · **To what, where:** little Swallow, city

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This is a sentence of «The Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Opening, part 1. 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:pg902:1:26
# text = One night there flew over the city a little Swallow.
1	One	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	2	nummod	_	_
2	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl:unmarked	_	_
3	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	4	advmod	_	_
4	flew	fly	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	over	over	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	city	city	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
9	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	Swallow	swallow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fly** | past |  | a little Swallow |  | the city; there | night |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V NP.theme PP»: agent=Agent swallow=Theme over city=Location |

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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 Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Project Gutenberg book 902 (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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