---
title: 'How can we find them?' asked the young man again. — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: 'How can we find them?' asked the young man again. Who acts: we. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 4, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 4, sentence 76

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'How can we find them?' asked the young man again.

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**Who acts:** we · **What happens:** find, ask · **To what, where:** daughters, young man · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (we), 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:pg3027:4:76
# text = 'How can we find them?' asked the young man again.
1	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	5	advmod	_	_
3	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	find	find	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	ccomp	_	_
6	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
9	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	young	young	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
13	again	again	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **find** | can | we | daughters *= daughter* |  |  |  |  | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Topic |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past |  |  | the young man |  | again |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP whether S»: agent=Agent man=Recipient 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:** «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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