---
title: The clocks were striking twelve when John awoke. — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The clocks were striking twelve when John awoke. Who acts: clocks, John. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Little Soldier, 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/pg7277/22/72/)

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Little Soldier, sentence 72

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The clocks were striking twelve when John awoke.

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**Who acts:** clocks, John · **What happens:** strike, awake · **To what, where:** twelve

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Little Soldier. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (clocks, John), 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:pg7277:22:72
# text = The clocks were striking twelve when John awoke.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	clocks	clock	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
3	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	striking	strike	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	twelve	twelve	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	4	obj	_	_
6	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	8	advmod	_	_
7	John	John	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
8	awoke	awake	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **strike** | past · progressive | the clocks | twelve |  |  |  |  | vn hit-18.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent twelve=Patient |
| 2 | **awake** | past | John |  |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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 Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 7277 (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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