---
title: "Why so, my lad?" asked the king. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: "Why so, my lad?" asked the king. Who acts: lad. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Kingdoms., 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/pg18442/43/21/)

<!-- 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/) / [Fifty Famous Stories Retold](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/) / [The Kingdoms.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/43/) / 21

# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Kingdoms., sentence 21

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"Why so, my lad?" asked the king.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** lad · **What happens:** ask · **To what, where:** king

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Kingdoms.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (lad), 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:pg18442:43:21
# text = "Why so, my lad?" asked the king.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	3	advmod	_	_
3	so	so	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
5	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	lad	lad	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
9	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | my lad |  | the king |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent king=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:** «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Project Gutenberg book 18442 (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 20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/43/20/)
- next →: [sentence 22](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/43/22/)
- ↑ back to [The Kingdoms.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/43/)