---
title: The house door stood open, but through a crack the mink could see th… — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The house door stood open, but through a crack the mink could see the wolves crowding in the corner behind it. Who acts: house door, mink, wolves. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 34, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3027/34/59/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Orange Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3027/) / [Opening, part 34](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3027/34/) / 59

# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 34, sentence 59

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The house door stood open, but through a crack the mink could see the wolves crowding in the corner behind it.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** house door, mink, wolves · **What happens:** stand, see, crowd · **To what, where:** wolves, crack, corner

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 34. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (house door, mink, wolves), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg3027:2191`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg3027:34:59
# text = The house door stood open, but through a crack the mink could see the wolves crowding in the corner behind it.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	house	house	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	compound	_	_
3	door	door	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	stood	stand	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	open	open	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	xcomp	_	_
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
7	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
8	through	through	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	crack	crack	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	mink	mink	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
13	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
14	see	see	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	conj	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	wolves	wolf	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	obj	_	_
17	crowding	crowd	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	14	xcomp	_	_
18	in	in	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
19	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	corner	corner	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obl	_	_
21	behind	behind	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
22	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	20	nmod	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stand** | past | the house door |  |  |  |  | open *property* | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **see** | could | the mink | the wolves |  | a crack |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **crowd** | gerund | the wolves *not said here* |  |  | the corner behind door |  |  | vn spray-9.7-1-1 «NP V PP.destination»: agent=Theme in corner=Destination |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3027 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 58](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3027/34/58/)
- next →: [sentence 60](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3027/34/60/)
- ↑ back to [Opening, part 34](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3027/34/)