---
title: “What city is this, my friend?” he inquired. — The Crimson Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “What city is this, my friend?” he inquired. Who acts: city. A sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 19, 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/pg2435/19/7/)

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# The Crimson Fairy Book, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 19, sentence 7

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“What city is this, my friend?” he inquired.

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**Who acts:** city · **What happens:** city, be, inquire · **To what, where:** this · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 19. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (city), 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:pg2435:19:7
# text = “What city is this, my friend?” he inquired.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	3	nsubj	_	_
3	city	city	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
4	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
5	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	3	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	friend	friend	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
11	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	inquired	inquire	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **city** *in a quote* |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **is a** *in a quote* | present |  | this |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **inquire** *speech: other* | past | city |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «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:** «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 2435 (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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