---
title: ‘What art is that?’ asked the fox. — Grimms' Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘What art is that?’ asked the fox. Who acts: art. A sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Fox and the Cat, 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/pg2591/42/11/)

<!-- 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/) / [Grimms' Fairy Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/) / [The Fox and the Cat](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/42/) / 11

# Grimms' Fairy Tales, The Fox and the Cat, sentence 11

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘What art is that?’ asked the fox.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** art · **What happens:** be, ask · **To what, where:** fox

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Fox and the Cat. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (art), 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:pg2591:42:11
# text = ‘What art is that?’ asked the fox.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	8	obj	_	_
3	art	art	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
4	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	cop	_	_
5	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	2	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
8	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	fox	fox	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | art |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past |  |  | the fox |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent fox=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:** «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, Project Gutenberg book 2591 (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 10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/42/10/)
- next →: [sentence 12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/42/12/)
- ↑ back to [The Fox and the Cat](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2591/42/)