---
title: The birds were flying about and twittering with delight, and the flo… — The Happy Prince, and Other Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The birds were flying about and twittering with delight, and the flowers were looking up through the green grass and laughing. Who acts: birds, flowers. 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/pg902/3/93/)

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# The Happy Prince, and Other Tales, Opening, part 3, sentence 93

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The birds were flying about and twittering with delight, and the flowers were looking up through the green grass and laughing.

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**Who acts:** birds, flowers · **What happens:** fly, twitter, look up, laugh

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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, flowers), 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:pg902:3:93
# text = The birds were flying about and twittering with delight, and the flowers were looking up through the green grass and laughing.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	birds	bird	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
3	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	flying	fly	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	about	about	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	twittering	twitter	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	conj	_	_
8	with	with	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	delight	delight	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	flowers	flower	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	nsubj	_	_
14	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
15	looking	look	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	conj	_	_
16	up	up	ADP	RP	_	15	compound:prt	_	_
17	through	through	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
18	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
19	green	green	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	20	amod	_	_
20	grass	grass	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obl	_	_
21	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	22	cc	_	_
22	laughing	laugh	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	15	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	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 · progressive | the birds |  |  |  |  | about *property* | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **twitter** | gerund | the birds *not said here* |  |  |  |  | with delight | vn animal\_sounds-38 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **look up** | past · progressive | the flowers |  |  |  |  | through the green grass | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent through grass=Theme |
| 4 | **laugh** | gerund | the flowers *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn nonverbal\_expression-40.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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