---
title: So they lounged about for several days, supporting themselves on fru… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: So they lounged about for several days, supporting themselves on fruits, which, however, they found some difficulty in eating with their long bills. Who acts: Mu, fruits, difficulty. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Caliph Stork, with its dependency tree and the prag
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Story of Caliph Stork, sentence 84

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
So they lounged about for several days, supporting themselves on fruits, which, however, they found some difficulty in eating with their long bills.

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**Who acts:** Mu, fruits, difficulty · **What happens:** lounge, support, find, eat, bill · **To what, where:** Mu, fruits, difficulty

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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, fruits, difficulty), 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:pg7277:7:84
# text = So they lounged about for several days, supporting themselves on fruits, which, however, they found some difficulty in eating with their long bills.
1	So	so	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	lounged	lounge	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	about	about	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
5	for	for	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	several	several	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	days	day	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
9	supporting	support	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	3	advcl	_	_
10	themselves	themselves	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	9	obj	_	_
11	on	on	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	fruits	fruit	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	19	punct	_	_
14	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	19	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
16	however	however	ADV	RB	_	19	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
18	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	19	nsubj	_	_
19	found	find	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	acl:relcl	_	_
20	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	21	det	_	_
21	difficulty	difficulty	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	obj	_	_
22	in	in	SCONJ	IN	_	23	mark	_	_
23	eating	eat	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	21	acl	_	_
24	with	with	ADP	IN	_	27	case	_	_
25	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	27	nmod:poss	_	_
26	long	long	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	27	amod	_	_
27	bills	bill	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	23	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
28	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **lounge** | past | Mu |  |  |  | day | about *property* | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **support** | gerund | Mu *not said here* | Mu |  | fruits |  |  | vn admire-31.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer themselves=Stimulus |
| 3 | **find** | past | fruits | some difficulty |  |  |  | however *property* | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent difficulty=Topic |
| 4 | **eat** | gerund | some difficulty *not said here* |  |  |  |  | with Mu's long bills | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 5 | **bill** |  | Mu |  |  |  |  |  | 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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