---
title: At intervals they would stir—stealthily, like great grey spiders. — In Ghostly Japan · tree and pragmatics
description: At intervals they would stir—stealthily, like great grey spiders. Who acts: hands. A sentence of «In Ghostly Japan» by Lafcadio Hearn, Morning Awakening After a Night’s Rest in a Temple, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# In Ghostly Japan, Morning Awakening After a Night’s Rest in a Temple, part 3, sentence 116

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At intervals they would stir—stealthily, like great grey spiders.

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**Who acts:** hands · **What happens:** stir · **To what, where:** intervals

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This is a sentence of «In Ghostly Japan» by Lafcadio Hearn, Morning Awakening After a Night’s Rest in a Temple, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (hands), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg8128:26:116
# text = At intervals they would stir—stealthily, like great grey spiders.
1	At	at	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	intervals	interval	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obl	_	_
3	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
4	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	stir	stir	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	—	-	PUNCT	:	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	stealthily	stealthily	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
9	like	like	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
10	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
11	grey	grey	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	spiders	spider	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stir** | would | hands *= hand* |  |  | intervals |  | like great grey spiders; stealthily *property* | vn modes\_of\_being\_with\_motion-47.3 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme at interval=Location |

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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:** «In Ghostly Japan» by Lafcadio Hearn, Project Gutenberg book 8128 (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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