---
title: There was a knocking heard at the Palace gate, and the old King went… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: There was a knocking heard at the Palace gate, and the old King went to open it. Who acts: knocking, old King. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, How to Tell a True Princess, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, How to Tell a True Princess, sentence 8

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
There was a knocking heard at the Palace gate, and the old King went to open it.

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**Who acts:** knocking, old King · **What happens:** be, hear, go, open · **To what, where:** knocking, Palace gate

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, How to Tell a True Princess. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (knocking, old King), 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:pg640:44:8
# text = There was a knocking heard at the Palace gate, and the old King went to open it.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	knocking	knocking	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
5	heard	hear	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	4	acl	_	_
6	at	at	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	Palace	Palace	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	compound	_	_
9	gate	gate	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	King	King	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
15	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
16	to	to	PART	TO	_	17	mark	_	_
17	open	open	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	xcomp	_	_
18	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | a knocking |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **hear** | participle |  | a knocking *not said here* |  | the Palace gate |  |  | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V PP.stimulus»: agent=Experiencer |
| 3 | **go** | past | the old King |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7 «NP V S-Quote»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 4 | **open** | to-infinitive | the old King *not said here* | knocking |  |  |  |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location it=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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