---
title: She tried to open the door, but was unsuccessful. — Winning Buddha's smile · tree and pragmatics
description: She tried to open the door, but was unsuccessful. Who acts: mother. A sentence of «Winning Buddha's smile», Winning Buddha’s Smile, part 5, 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/pg78208/7/126/)

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# Winning Buddha's smile, Winning Buddha’s Smile, part 5, sentence 126

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She tried to open the door, but was unsuccessful.

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**Who acts:** mother · **What happens:** try, open, be · **To what, where:** door

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This is a sentence of «Winning Buddha's smile», Winning Buddha’s Smile, part 5. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (mother), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg78208:7:126
# text = She tried to open the door, but was unsuccessful.
1	She	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	tried	try	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	PART	TO	_	4	mark	_	_
4	open	open	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	door	door	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
9	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
10	unsuccessful	unsuccessful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **try** | past | mother |  |  |  |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **open** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | mother *not said here* | the door |  |  |  |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location door=Theme |
| 3 | **is** | past |  |  |  |  |  | unsuccessful *property* | tree rules |

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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:** «Winning Buddha's smile», Project Gutenberg book 78208 (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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