---
title: Listening at the door usually gives you only scary half-pieces; aski… — Closed doors, whispers and secrets · tree and pragmatics
description: Listening at the door usually gives you only scary half-pieces; asking «Is everything OK?» later works much better. Who acts: Listening, everything, asking. A sentence of the lesson «Closed doors, whispers and secrets» of the adult life course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and th
---

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# Closed doors, whispers and secrets, sentence 10

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Listening at the door usually gives you only scary half-pieces; asking «Is everything OK?» later works much better.

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**Who acts:** Listening, everything, asking · **What happens:** listen, give, ask, be, work · **To what, where:** scary half pieces, you · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Closed doors, whispers and secrets» of the adult life course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Listening, everything, asking), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:adult-life:035-closed-doors-whispers-and-secrets.lesson:10
# text = Listening at the door usually gives you only scary half-pieces; asking «Is everything OK?» later works much better.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = adult-life
# lesson = 035-closed-doors-whispers-and-secrets.lesson
# annotation = Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R7-rel-agree ×2
1	Listening	listen	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	6	csubj	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=6:advcl
2	at	at	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	door	door	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	_
5	usually	usually	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	gives	give	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	iobj	_	_
8	only	only	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
9	scary	scary	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
10	half	half	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing|NumForm=Word|NumType=Frac	12	compound	_	_
11	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	10	punct	_	_
12	pieces	piece	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obj	_	_
13	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	6	punct	_	_
14	asking	ask	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	22	csubj	_	_
15	«	«	PUNCT	``	_	18	punct	_	_
16	Is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	18	cop	_	_
17	everything	everything	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Tot	18	nsubj	_	_
18	OK	ok	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	ccomp	_	Agree=R7-rel-agree|Haiku=14:parataxis
19	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	18	punct	_	_
20	»	»	ADV	''	_	18	advmod	_	_
21	later	late	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	22	advmod	_	_
22	works	work	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	parataxis	_	_
23	much	much	ADV	RB	_	24	advmod	_	_
24	better	well	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	22	advmod	_	_
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
No stored speech act for this sentence.

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **listen** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  | at the door | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent at door=Theme |
| 2 | **give** | present | Listening | scary half pieces | you |  |  | usually *property* | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent you=Recipient piece=Theme |
| 3 | **ask** *speech: ask* | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **is** *in a quote* | present | everything |  |  |  |  | ok *property* | tree rules |
| 5 | **work** | present | asking |  |  |  |  | late, well *property* | vn employment-95.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)**, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, `mova-school-agreed-en.conllu`) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence `school:adult-life:035-closed-doors-whispers-and-secrets.lesson:10`.

**The tree:** Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R7-rel-agree ×2. **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.

See the [release 0.4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

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