---
title: The birds did not care to sing in it as there were no children, and… — The Happy Prince, and Other Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The birds did not care to sing in it as there were no children, and the trees forgot to blossom. Who acts: birds, children, trees. 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/pg902/3/67/)

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# The Happy Prince, and Other Tales, Opening, part 3, sentence 67

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The birds did not care to sing in it as there were no children, and the trees forgot to blossom.

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**Who acts:** birds, children, trees · **What happens:** not care, sing, be, forget, not blossom · **To what, where:** country

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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 (birds, children, trees), 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:pg902:3:67
# text = The birds did not care to sing in it as there were no children, and the trees forgot to blossom.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	birds	bird	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
3	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	care	care	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	sing	sing	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	xcomp	_	_
8	in	in	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	obl	_	_
10	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	12	mark	_	_
11	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	12	expl	_	_
12	were	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	advcl	_	_
13	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	14	det	_	_
14	children	child	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	trees	tree	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	19	nsubj	_	_
19	forgot	forget	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
20	to	to	PART	TO	_	21	mark	_	_
21	blossom	blossom	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	19	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **care** | past · do-support | the birds |  |  |  |  |  | vn care-88.1-1 «NP V what S»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 2 | **sing** *speech: express* | to-infinitive | the birds *not said here* |  |  | country |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in it=Location |
| 3 | **be** | past | no children |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **forget** | past | the trees |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 5 | **not** **blossom** | to-infinitive | the trees *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn entity\_specific\_cos-45.5 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient |

<!-- .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.

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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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