---
title: It first scraped its bill with its claw, stroked down its feathers,… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: It first scraped its bill with its claw, stroked down its feathers, and then advanced towards the first stork. Who acts: Meantime. 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 60

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It first scraped its bill with its claw, stroked down its feathers, and then advanced towards the first stork.

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**Who acts:** Meantime · **What happens:** scrape, stroke down, advance, bill · **To what, where:** bill, feathers

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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 (Meantime), 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:pg7277:7:60
# text = It first scraped its bill with its claw, stroked down its feathers, and then advanced towards the first stork.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	first	first	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	3	advmod	_	_
3	scraped	scrape	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	bill	bill	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	with	with	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	claw	claw	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
10	stroked	stroke	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	3	advcl	_	_
11	down	down	ADP	RP	_	10	compound:prt	_	_
12	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	feathers	feather	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
16	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	17	advmod	_	_
17	advanced	advance	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
18	towards	towards	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
19	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
20	first	first	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos|NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	21	amod	_	_
21	stork	stork	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **scrape** | past | Meantime | Meantime's bill |  |  |  | with Meantime's claw; first *property* | vn cut-21.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent bill=Patient with claw=Instrument |
| 2 | **stroke down** | participle | Meantime *not said here* | Meantime's feathers |  |  |  |  | vn touch-20-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent feather=Experiencer |
| 3 | **advance** | past | Meantime *not said here* |  |  |  | then | towards the first stork | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme towards stork=Initial\_Location |
| 4 | **bill** |  | Meantime |  |  |  |  |  | nom bill «communication transitive»: poss=agent |

<!-- .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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