---
title: He had never thought that flying could be like that! — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He had never thought that flying could be like that! Who acts: bird. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 9, 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/pg3027/9/104/)

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# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 9, sentence 104

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He had never thought that flying could be like that!

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**Who acts:** bird · **What happens:** not think, fly, be · **To what, where:** that

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This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 9. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (bird), 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:pg3027:9:104
# text = He had never thought that flying could be like that!
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	thought	think	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	4	obj	_	_
6	flying	fly	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	4	xcomp	_	_
7	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
8	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	cop	_	_
9	like	like	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **think** *speech: other* | past · perfect | bird | that |  |  |  |  | vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V NP ADJ»: agent=Agent that=Attribute clause=Theme |
| 2 | **fly** | gerund | bird *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **is** | could |  |  |  |  |  | like that | tree rules |

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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:** «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3027 (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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