---
title: Suddenly the door opened, and a woman as old as the hills, who suppo… — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Suddenly the door opened, and a woman as old as the hills, who supported herself on crutches, came creeping out. Who acts: door, hills. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, Hansel and Gretel, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Grimms' Fairy Tales, Hansel and Gretel, sentence 79

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Suddenly the door opened, and a woman as old as the hills, who supported herself on crutches, came creeping out.

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**Who acts:** door, hills · **What happens:** open, support, come, creep out · **To what, where:** woman, crutches

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This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, Hansel and Gretel. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (door, hills), 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:pg2591:20:79
# text = Suddenly the door opened, and a woman as old as the hills, who supported herself on crutches, came creeping out.
1	Suddenly	suddenly	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	door	door	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	opened	open	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
9	as	as	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
10	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	conj	_	_
11	as	as	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	hills	hill	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
15	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	16	nsubj	_	_
16	supported	support	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	acl:relcl	_	_
17	herself	herself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	16	obj	_	_
18	on	on	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
19	crutches	crutch	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
21	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
22	creeping	creep	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	21	xcomp	_	_
23	out	out	ADP	RP	_	22	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **open** | past | the door |  |  |  |  | suddenly *property* | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **support** | past | the hills | woman |  | crutches |  |  | vn admire-31.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer herself=Stimulus |
| 3 | **come** | past | the door *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **creep out** | gerund | the door *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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:** «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, Project Gutenberg book 2591 (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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