---
title: And as they questioned him, he confessed all his story. — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: And as they questioned him, he confessed all his story. Who acts: beings, Wali. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Story of Wali Dâd the Simple-Hearted, part 2, 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/pg3282/35/8/)

<!-- 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 Brown Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/) / [Story of Wali Dâd the Simple-Hearted,…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/35/) / 8

# The Brown Fairy Book, Story of Wali Dâd the Simple-Hearted, part 2, sentence 8

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
And as they questioned him, he confessed all his story.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** beings, Wali · **What happens:** question, confess · **To what, where:** Wali, story

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Story of Wali Dâd the Simple-Hearted, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (beings, Wali), 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:pg3282:35:8
# text = And as they questioned him, he confessed all his story.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
2	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	4	mark	_	_
3	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	questioned	question	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	advcl	_	_
5	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
7	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	confessed	confess	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	all	all	DET	PDT	PronType=Tot	11	det:predet	_	_
10	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	story	story	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **question** *speech: other* | past | beings *= being* |  | Wali |  |  |  | vn interrogate-37.1.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Recipient |
| 2 | **confess** | past | Wali | Wali's story |  |  |  |  | vn confess-37.10 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent story=Topic |

<!-- .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 Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3282 (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 7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/35/7/)
- next →: [sentence 9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/35/9/)
- ↑ back to [Story of Wali Dâd the Simple-Hearted, part 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3282/35/)