---
title: At every step he looked all round him to see if perchance there was… — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: At every step he looked all round him to see if perchance there was anything lurking behind the stones. Who acts: Walter, anything. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 8, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 8, sentence 33

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At every step he looked all round him to see if perchance there was anything lurking behind the stones.

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**Who acts:** Walter, anything · **What happens:** look, see, be, lurk · **To what, where:** stones

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 8. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Walter, anything), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg3454:644`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg3454:8:33
# text = At every step he looked all round him to see if perchance there was anything lurking behind the stones.
1	At	at	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	every	every	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	3	det	_	_
3	step	step	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
4	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	looked	look	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	all	all	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
7	round	round	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	obl	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	see	see	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	advcl	_	_
11	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	14	mark	_	_
12	perchance	perchance	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	_
13	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	14	expl	_	_
14	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	ccomp	_	_
15	anything	anything	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	14	nsubj	_	_
16	lurking	lurk	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	15	acl	_	_
17	behind	behind	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
18	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	stones	stone	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	obl	_	_
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **look** | past | Walter |  |  |  |  | at every step; round Lisa | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent at step=Theme |
| 2 | **see** | to-infinitive | Walter *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 3 | **be** *a condition, not said to happen* | past | anything |  |  | there |  | perchance *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **lurk** | gerund |  |  |  | the stones |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme behind stone=Location |

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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 Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3454 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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