---
title: We are in great peril from a flock of birds, who are shooting us wit… — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: We are in great peril from a flock of birds, who are shooting us with their steel-pointed feathers. Who acts: We, birds. A sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Golden Fleece., part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Tanglewood Tales, The Golden Fleece., part 3, sentence 68

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We are in great peril from a flock of birds, who are shooting us with their steel-pointed feathers.

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**Who acts:** We, birds · **What happens:** be, shoot · **To what, where:** great peril, us

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This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Golden Fleece., 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 (We, birds), 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:pg976:27:68
# text = We are in great peril from a flock of birds, who are shooting us with their steel-pointed feathers.
1	We	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
2	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
3	in	in	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	peril	peril	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
6	from	from	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	flock	flock	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	_
9	of	of	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	birds	bird	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
12	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	14	nsubj	_	_
13	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
14	shooting	shoot	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	10	acl	_	_
15	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	14	obj	_	_
16	with	with	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
17	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	21	nmod:poss	_	_
18	steel	steel	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	18	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	pointed	pointed	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	amod	_	_
21	feathers	feather	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	obl	_	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 | **is** | present | We |  |  | great peril |  | from a flock of birds | tree rules |
| 2 | **shoot** | present · progressive | birds | us |  |  |  | with birds's pointed feathers | vn poison-42.2 «NP V NP PP.instrument»: agent=Agent we=Patient with feather=Instrument |

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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:** «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Project Gutenberg book 976 (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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