---
title: Suddenly the door opened, and an ancient dame leaning on a staff hob… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Suddenly the door opened, and an ancient dame leaning on a staff hobbled out. Who acts: door, ancient dame. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Hansel and Grettel, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, Hansel and Grettel, sentence 81

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Suddenly the door opened, and an ancient dame leaning on a staff hobbled out.

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**Who acts:** door, ancient dame · **What happens:** open, lean, hobble out · **To what, where:** staff

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Hansel and Grettel. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (door, ancient dame), 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:pg503:35:81
# text = Suddenly the door opened, and an ancient dame leaning on a staff hobbled 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	,	_	14	punct	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
7	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	ancient	ancient	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	dame	dame	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
10	leaning	lean	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	9	acl	_	_
11	on	on	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	staff	staff	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
14	hobbled	hobble	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	4	conj	_	_
15	out	out	ADP	RP	_	14	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	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 | **lean** | gerund | a ancient dame *not said here* |  |  | a staff |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent on staff=Location |
| 3 | **hobble out** | participle | a ancient dame |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2 «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:** «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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