---
title: “What of?” asked the neighbor's wife. — Andersen's Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “What of?” asked the neighbor's wife. Who acts: wife. A sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Shadow, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/23/19/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Andersen's Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/) / [The Shadow](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/23/) / 19

# Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Shadow, sentence 19

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
“What of?” asked the neighbor's wife.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** wife · **What happens:** ask

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Shadow. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (wife), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg1597:23:19
# text = “What of?” asked the neighbor's wife.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	6	obj	_	_
3	of	of	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
6	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	neighbor	neighbor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	's	's	PART	POS	_	8	case	_	_
10	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | the neighbor's wife |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent what=Recipient |

<!-- .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.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, Project Gutenberg book 1597 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/23/18/)
- next →: [sentence 20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/23/20/)
- ↑ back to [The Shadow](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg1597/23/)