---
title: No sooner had it touched his tongue than he heard a strange whisperi… — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: No sooner had it touched his tongue than he heard a strange whispering of little voices outside his window. Who acts: cover, king. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The White Snake, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Grimms' Fairy Tales, The White Snake, sentence 8

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No sooner had it touched his tongue than he heard a strange whispering of little voices outside his window.

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**Who acts:** cover, king · **What happens:** have, touch, hear, whisper · **To what, where:** tongue, strange whispering, little voices

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This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The White Snake. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (cover, king), 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:pg2591:34:8
# text = No sooner had it touched his tongue than he heard a strange whispering of little voices outside his window.
1	No	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	2	det	_	_
2	sooner	soon	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	3	advmod	_	_
3	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	touched	touch	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	ccomp	_	_
6	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	tongue	tongue	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	than	than	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
9	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	heard	hear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	advcl	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	strange	strange	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	whispering	whispering	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
14	of	of	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	voices	voice	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	nmod	_	_
17	outside	outside	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
18	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	19	nmod:poss	_	_
19	window	window	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past |  |  |  |  |  | soon *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **touch** | past | cover | king's tongue |  |  |  |  | vn contiguous\_location-47.8-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme tongue=Co-Theme |
| 3 | **hear** | past | king | a strange whispering of little voices outside king's window |  |  |  |  | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer whispering=Stimulus |
| 4 | **whisper** |  |  | little voices outside king's window |  |  |  |  | nom whispering «event transitive»: of=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:** «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, Project Gutenberg book 2591 (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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