---
title: Who shall describe their surprise when they at last turned round and… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Who shall describe their surprise when they at last turned round and beheld standing before them a beautiful lady exquisitely dressed! 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 171

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Who shall describe their surprise when they at last turned round and beheld standing before them a beautiful lady exquisitely dressed!

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**Who acts:** storks · **What happens:** describe, turn round, behold, stand, dress, surprise · **To what, where:** surprise, beautiful lady

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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:pg7277:7:171
# text = Who shall describe their surprise when they at last turned round and beheld standing before them a beautiful lady exquisitely dressed!
1	Who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	3	nsubj	_	_
2	shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	describe	describe	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	surprise	surprise	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	when	when	SCONJ	WRB	_	10	mark	_	_
7	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
8	at	at	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
9	last	last	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	turned	turn	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	3	advcl	_	_
11	round	round	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	beheld	behold	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	conj	_	_
14	standing	stand	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	13	advcl	_	_
15	before	before	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	obl	_	_
17	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
18	beautiful	beautiful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	amod	_	_
19	lady	lady	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obj	_	_
20	exquisitely	exquisitely	ADV	RB	_	21	advmod	_	_
21	dressed	dress	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	19	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **describe** | shall |  | storks's surprise |  |  |  |  | vn characterize-29.2-1-1 «NP V NP S\_ING»: agent=Agent surprise=Theme |
| 2 | **turn round** | participle | storks *= stork* |  |  |  |  | round *property* | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.theme V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **behold** | past | storks *= stork* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn sight-30.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer |
| 4 | **stand** | gerund | storks *= stork* *not said here* | a beautiful lady |  |  | before storks *= stork* |  | vn put\_spatial-9.2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent lady=Theme before they=Destination |
| 5 | **dress** | participle |  | a beautiful lady *not said here* |  |  |  | exquisitely *property* | vn dress-41.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 6 | **surprise** |  | storks *= stork* |  |  |  |  |  | nom surprise «feeling transitive»: 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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