---
title: You diggers, tell me: Who was it you heard singing over the work?' — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: You diggers, tell me: Who was it you heard singing over the work?' Who acts: You, diggers. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 19, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 19, sentence 71

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You diggers, tell me: Who was it you heard singing over the work?'

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**Who acts:** You, diggers · **What happens:** digger, tell, be, hear, sing · **To what, where:** me, work · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 19. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (You, diggers), 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:pg3027:19:71
# text = You diggers, tell me: Who was it you heard singing over the work?'
1	You	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	diggers	digger	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	tell	tell	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	11	punct	_	_
7	Who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	11	nsubj	_	_
8	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
9	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
10	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	heard	hear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	ccomp	_	_
12	singing	sing	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	11	xcomp	_	_
13	over	over	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	work	work	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **digger** |  | You |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* | infinitive | diggers |  | me |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP what S»: agent=Agent i=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 3 | **is a** | past |  | work |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **hear** | past |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 5 | **sing** *speech: express* | gerund |  |  |  | the work |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme over work=Location |

<!-- .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.

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**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.

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