---
title: “Where can she be?” moaned the old man, in despair. — The Crimson Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “Where can she be?” moaned the old man, in despair. Who acts: sign. A sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 9, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Crimson Fairy Book, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 9, sentence 101

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“Where can she be?” moaned the old man, in despair.

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**Who acts:** sign · **What happens:** be, moan · **To what, where:** old man · **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 9. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (sign), 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:pg2435:9:101
# text = “Where can she be?” moaned the old man, in despair.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Where	where	ADV	WRB	PronType=Rel	5	advmod	_	_
3	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	be	be	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
8	moaned	moan	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
13	in	in	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	despair	despair	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **can** *in a quote* | can | sign |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **moan** | past |  | the old man and despair |  |  |  |  | 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:** «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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