---
title: He said: “Open, Sesame!” and the door opened and shut behind him. — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He said: “Open, Sesame!” and the door opened and shut behind him. Who acts: Cassim, door. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Forty Thieves, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Forty Thieves, sentence 40

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He said: “Open, Sesame!” and the door opened and shut behind him.

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**Who acts:** Cassim, door · **What happens:** say, open, shut · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Forty Thieves. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Cassim, door), 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:pg503:34:40
# text = He said: “Open, Sesame!” and the door opened and shut behind him.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	5	punct	_	_
4	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	Open	open	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
7	Sesame	sesame	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	door	door	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
13	opened	open	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
15	shut	shut	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	13	conj	_	_
16	behind	behind	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Cassim |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **open** | past | the door |  |  |  |  |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **shut** | participle | the door *not said here* |  |  |  |  | behind Cassim | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient |

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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:** «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 503 (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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