Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Bird of Popular Song, sentence 39

And over the buried town fly the birds of heaven, the small and the great; they twitter and they sing as best they may, each bird with his beak.

Who acts: you, flakes · What happens: bury, fly, twitter, sing · To what, where: birds, buried town, best

This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Bird of Popular Song. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, flakes), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	And	and	CCONJ	_	6 fly	cc
2	over	over	ADP	_	5 town	case
3	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	5 town	det
4	buried	bury	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	5 town	amod
5	town	town	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 fly	obl
6	fly	fly	VERB	Mood=Imp VerbForm=Fin	root	root
7	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	8 birds	det
8	birds	bird	NOUN	Number=Plur	6 fly	obj
9	of	of	ADP	_	10 heaven	case
10	heaven	heaven	NOUN	Number=Sing	8 birds	nmod
11	,	,	PUNCT	_	13 small	punct
12	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	13 small	det
13	small	small	ADJ	Degree=Pos	8 birds	amod
14	and	and	CCONJ	_	16 great	cc
15	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	16 great	det
16	great	great	ADJ	Degree=Pos	13 small	conj
17	;	;	PUNCT	_	19 twitter	punct
18	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	19 twitter	nsubj
19	twitter	twitter	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	6 fly	parataxis
20	and	and	CCONJ	_	22 sing	cc
21	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	22 sing	nsubj
22	sing	sing	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	19 twitter	conj
23	as	as	ADP	_	24 best	case
24	best	good	ADJ	Degree=Sup	22 sing	obj
25	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	26 may	nsubj
26	may	may	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	24 best	ccomp
27	,	,	PUNCT	_	29 bird	punct
28	each	each	DET	PronType=Tot	29 bird	det
29	bird	bird	NOUN	Number=Sing	22 sing	conj
30	with	with	ADP	_	32 beak	case
31	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	32 beak	nmod:poss
32	beak	beak	NOUN	Number=Sing	29 bird	nmod
33	.	.	PUNCT	_	6 fly	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	roles by
1	bury	participle				vn put-9.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent
2	fly	imperative	you not said here	the birds of heaven	the buried town	vn spatial_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V NP.theme PP»: agent=Agent bird=Theme over town=Location
3	twitter	present	flakes = flake			vn animal_sounds-38 «NP V»: agent=Agent
4	sing speech: express	present	flakes = flake	best		vn sound_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location good=Theme

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.

Text: «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Project Gutenberg book 27200 (public domain in the USA). Tree: Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. Frames: Mova's frames reader (prag), the chapter read in order.

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg27200/11/39/