---
title: Scarcely had her feet touched the threshold than Grimace appeared. — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Scarcely had her feet touched the threshold than Grimace appeared. Who acts: Scarcely, feet, Grimace. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 31, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/31/1/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 31, sentence 1

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Scarcely had her feet touched the threshold than Grimace appeared.

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**Who acts:** Scarcely, feet, Grimace · **What happens:** have, touch, appear · **To what, where:** threshold

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 31. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Scarcely, feet, Grimace), 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:pg5615:31:1
# text = Scarcely had her feet touched the threshold than Grimace appeared.
1	Scarcely	Scarcely	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
2	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	feet	foot	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
5	touched	touch	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	ccomp	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	threshold	threshold	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	than	than	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
9	Grimace	Grimace	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
10	appeared	appear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | Scarcely |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **touch** | past | Scarcely's feet | the threshold |  |  |  |  | vn contiguous\_location-47.8-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme threshold=Co-Theme |
| 3 | **appear** | past | Grimace | the threshold *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location threshold=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 Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 5615 (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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