---
title: "This troublesome and impertinent little fowl," said he, "would make… — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: "This troublesome and impertinent little fowl," said he, "would make a delicate titbit to begin dinner with. Who acts: fowl, troublesome little fowl. A sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Circe's Palace., part 2, 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/pg976/16/1/)

<!-- 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/) / [Tanglewood Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/) / [Circe's Palace., part 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/16/) / 1

# Tanglewood Tales, Circe's Palace., part 2, sentence 1

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"This troublesome and impertinent little fowl," said he, "would make a delicate titbit to begin dinner with.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** fowl, troublesome little fowl · **What happens:** say, make, begin · **To what, where:** delicate titbit, dinner · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Circe's Palace., part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (fowl, troublesome little fowl), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg976:1144`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg976:16:1
# text = "This troublesome and impertinent little fowl," said he, "would make a delicate titbit to begin dinner with.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	15	punct	_	_
2	This	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	7	det	_	_
3	troublesome	troublesome	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
4	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
5	impertinent	impertinent	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	conj	_	_
6	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	fowl	fowl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	10	punct	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	parataxis	_	_
11	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
13	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	15	punct	_	_
14	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
15	make	make	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
16	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
17	delicate	delicate	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	_
18	titbit	titbit	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obj	_	_
19	to	to	PART	TO	_	20	mark	_	_
20	begin	begin	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	18	acl	_	_
21	dinner	dinner	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	obj	_	_
22	with	with	ADP	IN	_	20	obl	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	15	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | fowl |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **make** *in a quote* | would | this troublesome little fowl | a delicate titbit |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **begin** *in a quote* | to-infinitive | this troublesome little fowl *not said here* | dinner |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent dinner=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:** «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Project Gutenberg book 976 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [Circe's Palace., part 1, 92](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/15/92/)
- next →: [sentence 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/16/2/)
- ↑ back to [Circe's Palace., part 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/16/)