---
title: “But how does he manage to get pears in midwinter?” asked the king. — The Crimson Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “But how does he manage to get pears in midwinter?” asked the king. Who acts: Piro, king. A sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 25, 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/pg2435/25/50/)

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# The Crimson Fairy Book, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 25, sentence 50

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“But how does he manage to get pears in midwinter?” asked the king.

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**Who acts:** Piro, king · **What happens:** manage, get, ask · **To what, where:** pears, midwinter · **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 25. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Piro, king), 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:pg2435:25:50
# text = “But how does he manage to get pears in midwinter?” asked the king.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
3	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	6	advmod	_	_
4	does	do	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
5	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	manage	manage	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	ccomp	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	get	get	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	xcomp	_	_
9	pears	pear	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obj	_	_
10	in	in	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	midwinter	midwinter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
14	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **manage** *in a quote* | present · do-support | Piro |  |  |  |  |  | vn succeed-74-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **get** *in a quote* | to-infinitive | Piro *not said here* | pears |  | midwinter |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer pear=Stimulus |
| 3 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | the king |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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