---
title: But outside the door, which stood ajar, was a poor boy, peeping thro… — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: But outside the door, which stood ajar, was a poor boy, peeping through the crack of the door. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Children's Prattle, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Children's Prattle, sentence 19

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But outside the door, which stood ajar, was a poor boy, peeping through the crack of the door.

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**What happens:** stand, be, peep · **To what, where:** door, poor boy

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Children's Prattle. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg27200:18:19
# text = But outside the door, which stood ajar, was a poor boy, peeping through the crack of the door.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
2	outside	outside	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	door	door	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
6	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	7	nsubj	_	_
7	stood	stand	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	ajar	ajar	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
15	peeping	peep	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	7	advcl	_	_
16	through	through	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	crack	crack	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obl	_	_
19	of	of	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
20	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	door	door	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stand** | past |  |  |  | the door |  | ajar *property* | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent outside door=Location |
| 2 | **is a** | past |  | a poor boy |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **peep** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  | through the crack of the door | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent through crack=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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