---
title: Before the door stood two wooden soldiers, who were shouldering arms. — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Before the door stood two wooden soldiers, who were shouldering arms. Who acts: two wooden soldiers. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 9, 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/pg5615/9/5/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 9, sentence 5

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Before the door stood two wooden soldiers, who were shouldering arms.

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**Who acts:** two wooden soldiers · **What happens:** stand, shoulder · **To what, where:** two wooden soldiers, door, arms

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 9. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (two wooden soldiers), 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:pg5615:9:5
# text = Before the door stood two wooden soldiers, who were shouldering arms.
1	Before	before	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	door	door	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
4	stood	stand	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	two	two	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	7	nummod	_	_
6	wooden	wooden	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	soldiers	soldier	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	11	nsubj	_	_
10	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	shouldering	shoulder	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	7	acl	_	_
12	arms	arm	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stand** | past |  | two wooden soldiers |  | the door |  |  | vn put\_spatial-9.2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent soldier=Theme before door=Destination |
| 2 | **shoulder** | past · progressive | two wooden soldiers | arms |  |  |  |  | vn pocket-9.10 «NP V NP.theme»: agent=Agent arm=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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