---
title: It was a soft cautious tapping on the door of his tree. — Peter Pan · tree and pragmatics
description: It was a soft cautious tapping on the door of his tree. Who acts: tenement. A sentence of «Peter Pan» by J. M. Barrie, Chapter XIII. DO YOU BELIEVE IN FAIRIES?, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Peter Pan, Chapter XIII. DO YOU BELIEVE IN FAIRIES?, sentence 78

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It was a soft cautious tapping on the door of his tree.

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**Who acts:** tenement · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** soft cautious tapping, door

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This is a sentence of «Peter Pan» by J. M. Barrie, Chapter XIII. DO YOU BELIEVE IN FAIRIES?. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (tenement), 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:pg16:14:78
# text = It was a soft cautious tapping on the door of his tree.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
4	soft	soft	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
5	cautious	cautious	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	tapping	tapping	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
7	on	on	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	door	door	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	tree	tree	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | tenement | a soft cautious tapping |  | the door of Peter's tree |  |  | tree rules |

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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:** «Peter Pan» by J. M. Barrie, Project Gutenberg book 16 (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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