---
title: He kept still, and carefully watched for an opportunity of striking… — More English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: He kept still, and carefully watched for an opportunity of striking another blow. Who acts: Johnny, opportunity. A sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 7, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 7, sentence 129

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He kept still, and carefully watched for an opportunity of striking another blow.

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**Who acts:** Johnny, opportunity · **What happens:** keep, watch, strike · **To what, where:** blow

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This is a sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 7. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Johnny, opportunity), 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:pg14241:21:129
# text = He kept still, and carefully watched for an opportunity of striking another blow.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	kept	keep	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	still	still	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
6	carefully	carefully	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
7	watched	watch	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	2	conj	_	_
8	for	for	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	opportunity	opportunity	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
11	of	of	SCONJ	IN	_	12	mark	_	_
12	striking	strike	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	10	acl	_	_
13	another	another	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	14	det	_	_
14	blow	blow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **keep** | past | Johnny |  |  |  | still |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **watch** | participle | Johnny *not said here* |  |  |  |  | for a opportunity; carefully *property* | vn search-35.2 «NP V PP.theme NP.location»: agent=Agent for opportunity=Theme |
| 3 | **strike** | gerund | a opportunity *not said here* | another blow |  |  |  |  | vn hit-18.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent blow=Patient |

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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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