---
title: As soon as the storks heard this they were nearly beside themselves… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: As soon as the storks heard this they were nearly beside themselves with joy. Who acts: storks. 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 164

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As soon as the storks heard this they were nearly beside themselves with joy.

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**Who acts:** storks · **What happens:** hear, be · **To what, where:** this · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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), 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:pg7277:7:164
# text = As soon as the storks heard this they were nearly beside themselves with joy.
1	As	as	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
2	soon	soon	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
3	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	storks	stork	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nsubj	_	_
6	heard	hear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	advcl	_	_
7	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	6	obj	_	_
8	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
9	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	cop	_	_
10	nearly	nearly	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
11	beside	beside	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	themselves	themselves	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	6	ccomp	_	_
13	with	with	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	joy	joy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	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 | **hear** | past | the storks | this |  |  |  | with joy | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer this=Stimulus |
| 2 | **is** | past | storks *= stork* |  |  |  |  | beside storks *= stork*; nearly *property* | tree rules |

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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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