---
title: At the sight of the hideous creature he almost fell backwards. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: At the sight of the hideous creature he almost fell backwards. Who acts: throat. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Canary, 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/pg540/40/237/)

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Enchanted Canary, sentence 237

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At the sight of the hideous creature he almost fell backwards.

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**Who acts:** throat · **What happens:** fall, sight · **To what, where:** hideous creature

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Canary. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (throat), 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:pg540:40:237
# text = At the sight of the hideous creature he almost fell backwards.
1	At	at	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	sight	sight	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
4	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	hideous	hideous	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	creature	creature	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
9	almost	almost	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
10	fell	fall	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	acl:relcl	_	_
11	backwards	backwards	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fall** | past | throat | the hideous creature *not said here* |  |  |  | almost, backwards *property* | vn become-109.1-1 «NP V ADJ»: agent=Patient creature=Result |
| 2 | **sight** |  |  | the hideous creature |  |  |  |  | nom sight «cognition 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:** «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 540 (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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