---
title: He took aim, and was about to fire when the stag bounded away. — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He took aim, and was about to fire when the stag bounded away. Who acts: Meantime, stag. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Lads, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Golden Lads, sentence 71

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He took aim, and was about to fire when the stag bounded away.

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**Who acts:** Meantime, stag · **What happens:** take, be, bound away · **To what, where:** aim, about fire

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Lads. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Meantime, stag), 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:pg7277:49:71
# text = He took aim, and was about to fire when the stag bounded away.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	aim	aim	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
6	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
7	about	about	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	fire	fire	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	parataxis	_	_
10	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	13	advmod	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	stag	stag	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
13	bounded	bound	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	9	acl:relcl	_	_
14	away	away	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** | past | Meantime | aim |  |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent aim=Theme |
| 2 | **is a** | past |  | about fire |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **bound away** | participle | the stag |  |  |  |  | away *property* | vn run-51.3.2 «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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