---
title: Presently he heard steps coming upstairs. — More English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Presently he heard steps coming upstairs. Who acts: he, steps. A sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 2, 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/pg14241/16/7/)

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# More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 2, sentence 7

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Presently he heard steps coming upstairs.

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**Who acts:** he, steps · **What happens:** hear, come · **To what, where:** steps

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This is a sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, 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 (he, steps), 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:pg14241:16:7
# text = Presently he heard steps coming upstairs.
1	Presently	presently	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	heard	hear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	steps	step	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obj	_	_
5	coming	come	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	4	acl	_	_
6	upstairs	upstairs	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hear** | past | he | steps |  |  |  | presently *property* | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer step=Stimulus |
| 2 | **come** | gerund | steps *not said here* |  |  |  |  | upstairs *property* | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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:** «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 14241 (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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