---
title: Without a moment’s hesitation the clown grasped the black outstretch… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Without a moment’s hesitation the clown grasped the black outstretched hand. Who acts: clown, moment. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Magic Swan, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Magic Swan, sentence 44

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Without a moment’s hesitation the clown grasped the black outstretched hand.

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**Who acts:** clown, moment · **What happens:** grasp, hesitate · **To what, where:** black outstretched hand

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Magic Swan. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (clown, moment), 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:pg7277:23:44
# text = Without a moment’s hesitation the clown grasped the black outstretched hand.
1	Without	without	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	moment	moment	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	’s	's	PART	POS	_	3	case	_	_
5	hesitation	hesitation	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	clown	clown	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
8	grasped	grasp	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
10	black	black	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
11	outstretched	outstretched	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	hand	hand	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **grasp** | past | the clown | the black outstretched hand |  |  |  | without a moment's hesitation | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer hand=Stimulus |
| 2 | **hesitate** |  | a moment |  |  |  |  |  | nom hesitation «cognition intransitive»: poss=agent |

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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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