---
title: But flying was not quite an easy matter, for the two storks had had… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But flying was not quite an easy matter, for the two storks had had but little practice as yet. Who acts: two 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.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/7/94/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Green Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/) / [The Story of Caliph Stork](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/7/) / 94

# The Green Fairy Book, The Story of Caliph Stork, sentence 94

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
But flying was not quite an easy matter, for the two storks had had but little practice as yet.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** two storks · **What happens:** fly, not be, have · **To what, where:** flying easy matter

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (two storks), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg7277:7:94
# text = But flying was not quite an easy matter, for the two storks had had but little practice as yet.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
2	flying	fly	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	8	amod	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	8	advmod	_	_
5	quite	quite	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
6	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	easy	easy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	matter	matter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
10	for	for	SCONJ	IN	_	15	mark	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	two	two	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	13	nummod	_	_
13	storks	stork	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	nsubj	_	_
14	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
15	had	have	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	8	conj	_	_
16	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
17	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	_
18	practice	practice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	conj	_	_
19	as	as	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
20	yet	yet	ADV	RB	_	15	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fly** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **not** **is a** | past |  | a flying easy matter |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **have** | past · perfect | the two storks |  |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 93](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/7/93/)
- next →: [sentence 95](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/7/95/)
- ↑ back to [The Story of Caliph Stork](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/7/)