---
title: With a great cac-kling and hissing they went, half flying, half runn… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: With a great cac-kling and hissing they went, half flying, half running, across the meadow. Who acts: geese. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Maximilian and the Goose Boy., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Maximilian and the Goose Boy., sentence 58

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With a great cac-kling and hissing they went, half flying, half running, across the meadow.

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**Who acts:** geese · **What happens:** hiss, go, fly, run

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Maximilian and the Goose Boy.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (geese), 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:pg18442:47:58
# text = With a great cac-kling and hissing they went, half flying, half running, across the meadow.
1	With	with	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
3	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
4	cac	cac	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	kling	kling	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	hissing	hiss	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	6	conj	_	_
9	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
12	half	half	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Frac	13	advmod	_	_
13	flying	fly	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	10	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
15	half	half	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Frac	16	advmod	_	_
16	running	run	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	13	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
18	across	across	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
19	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	meadow	meadow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hiss** | gerund | geese *= goose* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **go** | past | geese *= goose* |  |  |  |  | with a great cac kling | vn say-37.7 «NP V S-Quote»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **fly** | gerund | geese *= goose* *not said here* |  |  |  |  | half *property* | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **run** | gerund | geese *= goose* *not said here* |  |  |  |  | half *property* | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «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:** «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Project Gutenberg book 18442 (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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