---
title: The farmer opened the lid a little way, and saw him inside. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The farmer opened the lid a little way, and saw him inside. Who acts: farmer. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Big Klaus and Little Klaus, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Story of Big Klaus and Little Klaus, sentence 86

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The farmer opened the lid a little way, and saw him inside.

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**Who acts:** farmer · **What happens:** open, see · **To what, where:** lid, Klaus

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Big Klaus and Little Klaus. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (farmer), 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:pg640:41:86
# text = The farmer opened the lid a little way, and saw him inside.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	farmer	farmer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	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	lid	lid	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	saw	see	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
12	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	obj	_	_
13	inside	inside	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **open** | past | the farmer | the lid |  |  |  | a little way *obl:unmarked* | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location lid=Theme |
| 2 | **see** | past | the farmer *not said here* | Klaus |  |  |  | inside *property* | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer he=Stimulus |

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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 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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