---
title: In their misery they could not think what to do next. — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: In their misery they could not think what to do next. Who acts: Mu. 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 82

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In their misery they could not think what to do next.

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**Who acts:** Mu · **What happens:** not think, do · **To what, where:** misery · **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 (Mu), 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:pg7277:7:82
# text = In their misery they could not think what to do next.
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	3	nmod:poss	_	_
3	misery	misery	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
4	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
5	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
6	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	7	advmod	_	_
7	think	think	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
8	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	10	obj	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	ccomp	_	_
11	next	next	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **think** *speech: other* | could | Mu |  |  | Mu's misery |  |  | vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 2 | **do** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  | next *property* | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Eventuality |

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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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