---
title: I heard a confused noise about me, but could see nothing except the… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: I heard a confused noise about me, but could see nothing except the sky. Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Chapter I, 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/pg503/43/24/)

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# The Blue Fairy Book, Chapter I, sentence 24

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I heard a confused noise about me, but could see nothing except the sky.

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** hear, see · **To what, where:** confused noise, nothing

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Chapter I. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), 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:pg503:43:24
# text = I heard a confused noise about me, but could see nothing except the sky.
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	heard	hear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	confused	confused	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	noise	noise	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
6	about	about	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	see	see	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	conj	_	_
12	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	11	obj	_	_
13	except	except	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	sky	sky	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hear** | past | I | a confused noise |  |  |  | about me | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer noise=Stimulus |
| 2 | **see** | could | I *not said here* | nothing |  |  |  | except the sky | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer nothing=Stimulus |

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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 Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 503 (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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