---
title: 'And how am I to come down?' inquired the wolf. — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: 'And how am I to come down?' inquired the wolf. Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 7, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 7, sentence 8

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'And how am I to come down?' inquired the wolf.

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** come down, inquire · **To what, where:** wolf

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This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 7. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), 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:pg3027:7:8
# text = 'And how am I to come down?' inquired the wolf.
1	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
3	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	7	advmod	_	_
4	am	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
5	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	come	come	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	parataxis	_	_
8	down	down	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
11	inquired	inquire	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	wolf	wolf	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **come down** | present | I |  |  |  |  | down *property* | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **inquire** *speech: other* | past |  | the wolf |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent wolf=Recipient |

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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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