---
title: But the Nightingale’s voice grew fainter, and her little wings began… — The Happy Prince, and Other Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: But the Nightingale’s voice grew fainter, and her little wings began to beat, and a film came over her eyes. Who acts: voice, little wings, film. A sentence of «The Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Opening, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg902/3/16/)

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# The Happy Prince, and Other Tales, Opening, part 3, sentence 16

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But the Nightingale’s voice grew fainter, and her little wings began to beat, and a film came over her eyes.

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**Who acts:** voice, little wings, film · **What happens:** grow, begin, beat, come · **To what, where:** eyes

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This is a sentence of «The Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Opening, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (voice, little wings, film), 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:pg902:3:16
# text = But the Nightingale’s voice grew fainter, and her little wings began to beat, and a film came over her eyes.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	Nightingale	Nightingale	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	’s	's	PART	POS	_	3	case	_	_
5	voice	voice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
6	grew	grow	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	fainter	faint	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	6	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
10	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
11	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	wings	wing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	nsubj	_	_
13	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
14	to	to	PART	TO	_	15	mark	_	_
15	beat	beat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	20	cc	_	_
18	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	film	film	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	nsubj	_	_
20	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
21	over	over	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
22	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	23	nmod:poss	_	_
23	eyes	eye	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **grow** | past | the Nightingale's voice |  |  |  |  | faint *property* | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **begin** | past | voice's little wings |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 3 | **beat** | to-infinitive | voice's little wings *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **come** | past | a film |  |  | voice's eyes |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme over eye=Initial\_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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