---
title: 'What is it? tell me! — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: 'What is it? tell me! Who acts: you. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 12, 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/pg3027/12/104/)

<!-- 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/) / [The Orange Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3027/) / [Opening, part 12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3027/12/) / 104

# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 12, sentence 104

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
'What is it? tell me!

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** be, tell · **To what, where:** palace, me · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 12. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you), 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:pg3027:12:104
# text = 'What is it? tell me!
1	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	6	advcl	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
6	tell	tell	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present |  | palace |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | imperative | you *not said here* |  | me |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent i=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:** «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3027 (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 103](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3027/12/103/)
- next →: [sentence 105](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3027/12/105/)
- ↑ back to [Opening, part 12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3027/12/)