---
title: Why, what's the meaning of this?" thought he. — Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Why, what's the meaning of this?" thought he. Who acts: meaning. A sentence of «Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales», The Serpent-wife, 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/pg29672/9/29/)

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# Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales, The Serpent-wife, sentence 29

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Why, what's the meaning of this?" thought he.

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**Who acts:** meaning · **What happens:** be, think · **To what, where:** meaning, corn

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This is a sentence of «Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales», The Serpent-wife. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (meaning), 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:pg29672:9:29
# text = Why, what's the meaning of this?" thought he.
1	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	11	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
3	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	6	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	's	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	meaning	meaning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	6	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
11	thought	think	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present |  | the meaning |  |  |  | of this | tree rules |
| 2 | **think** *speech: other* *in a quote* | past | the meaning | corn |  |  |  |  | vn wish-62 «NP V NP»: agent=Pivot he=Theme |

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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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