---
title: The frog was holding the carriage door open for him to step in. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The frog was holding the carriage door open for him to step in. Who acts: frog. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Frog, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Frog, sentence 57

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The frog was holding the carriage door open for him to step in.

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**Who acts:** frog · **What happens:** hold, step in · **To what, where:** carriage door

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Frog. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (frog), 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:pg641:36:57
# text = The frog was holding the carriage door open for him to step in.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	frog	frog	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	holding	hold	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	carriage	carriage	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	compound	_	_
7	door	door	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
8	open	open	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	xcomp	_	_
9	for	for	SCONJ	IN	_	12	mark	_	_
10	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
12	step	step	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	advcl	_	_
13	in	in	ADP	RP	_	12	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hold** | past · progressive | the frog | the carriage door |  |  |  | open *property* | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent door=Theme |
| 2 | **step in** | to-infinitive | frog |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2 «NP V»: agent=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 Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 641 (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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