---
title: Suddenly a knocking was heard at the city gate, and the old king wen… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Suddenly a knocking was heard at the city gate, and the old king went to open it. Who acts: old king. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Princess and the Pea, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, The Princess and the Pea, sentence 7

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Suddenly a knocking was heard at the city gate, and the old king went to open it.

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**Who acts:** old king · **What happens:** hear, go, open · **To what, where:** knocking, city gate

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, The Princess and the Pea. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (old king), 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:pg27200:150:7
# text = Suddenly a knocking was heard at the city gate, and the old king went to open it.
1	Suddenly	suddenly	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	knocking	knocking	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux:pass	_	_
5	heard	hear	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
6	at	at	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	city	city	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	compound	_	_
9	gate	gate	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
15	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
16	to	to	PART	TO	_	17	mark	_	_
17	open	open	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	xcomp	_	_
18	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hear** | past · passive |  | a knocking |  | the city gate |  | suddenly *property* | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: subject=Stimulus |
| 2 | **go** | past | the old king |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7 «NP V S-Quote»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **open** | to-infinitive | the old king *not said here* | knocking |  |  |  |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location it=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:** «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Project Gutenberg book 27200 (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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