---
title: That very evening they heard something tap tapping at the door low d… — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: That very evening they heard something tap tapping at the door low down, and a voice cried out: Who acts: eyes, something tap, voice. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Well of the World's End, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, The Well of the World's End, sentence 23

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That very evening they heard something tap tapping at the door low down, and a voice cried out:

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**Who acts:** eyes, something tap, voice · **What happens:** hear, tap, cry out · **To what, where:** something tap

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Well of the World's End. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (eyes, something tap, voice), 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:pg7439:47:23
# text = That very evening they heard something tap tapping at the door low down, and a voice cried out:
1	That	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	3	det	_	_
2	very	very	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	_
3	evening	evening	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl:unmarked	_	_
4	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	heard	hear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	7	compound	_	_
7	tap	tap	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	tapping	tap	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	5	xcomp	_	_
9	at	at	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	door	door	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
12	low	low	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	13	advmod	_	_
13	down	down	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
16	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	voice	voice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nsubj	_	_
18	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
19	out	out	ADP	RP	_	18	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	18	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hear** | past | eyes *= eye* | something tap |  |  | evening |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **tap** | gerund | something tap *not said here* |  |  |  |  | at the door; down *property* | vn hit-18.1-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent at door=Patient |
| 3 | **cry out** *speech: express* | past | a voice |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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:** «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7439 (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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