---
title: What is this, little mother?" cried he. " — Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: What is this, little mother?" cried he. " Who acts: husband. A sentence of «Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales», The Cat, the Cock, and the Fox, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales, The Cat, the Cock, and the Fox, sentence 99

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What is this, little mother?" cried he. "

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**Who acts:** husband · **What happens:** be, cry · **To what, where:** little mother · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales», The Cat, the Cock, and the Fox. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (husband), 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:pg29672:20:99
# text = What is this, little mother?" cried he. "
1	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	6	nsubj	_	_
2	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
3	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	6	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
5	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
9	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
12	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present |  | little mother |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **cry** *speech: express* *in a quote* | past | husband |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V that 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:** «Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales», Project Gutenberg book 29672 (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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