---
title: Hardly had it touched his tongue than he heard a strange sort of whi… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Hardly had it touched his tongue than he heard a strange sort of whispering of tiny voices outside his window. Who acts: cover, King. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The White Snake, 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/pg7277/50/9/)

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# The Green Fairy Book, The White Snake, sentence 9

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Hardly had it touched his tongue than he heard a strange sort of whispering of tiny voices outside his window.

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**Who acts:** cover, King · **What happens:** have, touch, hear, sort, whisper · **To what, where:** tongue, strange sort, whispering, tiny voices

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The White Snake. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (cover, King), 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:pg7277:50:9
# text = Hardly had it touched his tongue than he heard a strange sort of whispering of tiny voices outside his window.
1	Hardly	hardly	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
2	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	touched	touch	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	ccomp	_	_
5	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	tongue	tongue	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	than	than	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	heard	hear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	advcl	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	strange	strange	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	sort	sort	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
13	of	of	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	whispering	whispering	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nmod	_	_
15	of	of	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	tiny	tiny	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
17	voices	voice	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	nmod	_	_
18	outside	outside	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
19	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	20	nmod:poss	_	_
20	window	window	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past |  |  |  |  |  | hardly *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **touch** | past | cover | King's tongue |  |  |  |  | vn contiguous\_location-47.8-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme tongue=Co-Theme |
| 3 | **hear** | past | King | a strange sort of whispering of tiny voices outside King's window |  |  |  |  | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer sort=Stimulus |
| 4 | **sort** |  |  | whispering of tiny voices outside King's window |  |  |  |  | nom sort «cognition transitive»: of=patient |
| 5 | **whisper** |  |  | tiny voices outside King's window |  |  |  |  | nom whispering «event transitive»: of=patient |

<!-- .note -->
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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