---
title: When they reached it the owl advised them to keep very quiet. — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: When they reached it the owl advised them to keep very quiet. Who acts: storks, owl. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Caliph Stork, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Story of Caliph Stork, sentence 155

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When they reached it the owl advised them to keep very quiet.

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**Who acts:** storks, owl · **What happens:** reach, advise, keep · **To what, where:** ray, storks

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Caliph Stork. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (storks, owl), 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:pg7277:7:155
# text = When they reached it the owl advised them to keep very quiet.
1	When	when	SCONJ	WRB	_	3	mark	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	reached	reach	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	advcl	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	owl	owl	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
7	advised	advise	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	keep	keep	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	xcomp	_	_
11	very	very	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	quiet	quiet	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **reach** | past | storks *= stork* | ray |  |  |  |  | vn body\_motion-49.2-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Agent it=Theme |
| 2 | **advise** *speech: other* | past | the owl | storks *= stork* |  |  |  |  | vn advise-37.9-1 «NP V NP how S\_INF»: agent=Agent they=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 3 | **keep** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | storks *= stork* *not said here* |  |  |  |  | quiet *property* | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=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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