---
title: He heard some one tap softly at his door, and he said,-- — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: He heard some one tap softly at his door, and he said,-- Who acts: Fitzwarren. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, V. the Fortune., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, V. the Fortune., sentence 2

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He heard some one tap softly at his door, and he said,--

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**Who acts:** Fitzwarren · **What happens:** hear, say · **To what, where:** one tap, door · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, V. the Fortune.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Fitzwarren), 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:pg18442:53:2
# text = He heard some one tap softly at his door, and he said,--
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	heard	hear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	5	det	_	_
4	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	5	nummod	_	_
5	tap	tap	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
6	softly	softly	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
7	at	at	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	door	door	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
12	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hear** | past | Fitzwarren | some one tap |  | Fitzwarren's door |  | softly *property* | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer tap=Stimulus |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Fitzwarren |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: 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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**Text:** «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Project Gutenberg book 18442 (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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