---
title: So she opened the door gently, and seeing the two little ducklings s… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: So she opened the door gently, and seeing the two little ducklings sound asleep, she there and then killed them. Who acts: answer, seeing. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The White Duck, 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/pg640/29/40/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The White Duck, sentence 40

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So she opened the door gently, and seeing the two little ducklings sound asleep, she there and then killed them.

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**Who acts:** answer, seeing · **What happens:** open, see, sound, kill · **To what, where:** door, two little ducklings, ducklings

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The White Duck. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (answer, seeing), 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:pg640:29:40
# text = So she opened the door gently, and seeing the two little ducklings sound asleep, she there and then killed them.
1	So	so	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
2	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	opened	open	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	door	door	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	gently	gently	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
9	seeing	see	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	14	csubj	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
11	two	two	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	13	nummod	_	_
12	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	ducklings	duckling	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obj	_	_
14	sound	sound	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
15	asleep	asleep	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
17	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
18	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	14	conj	_	_
19	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
20	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	21	advmod	_	_
21	killed	kill	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	18	conj	_	_
22	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	21	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **open** | past | answer | the door |  |  |  | gently *property* | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location door=Theme |
| 2 | **see** | gerund |  | the two little ducklings |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer duckling=Stimulus |
| 3 | **sound** | present | seeing |  |  |  |  | asleep *property* | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V ADJ»: agent=Stimulus |
| 4 | **kill** | past | seeing *not said here* | ducklings *= duckling* |  |  | then |  | vn remove-10.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Theme |

<!-- .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.

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**Text:** «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 640 (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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