---
title: “Why, what are you talking about?” answered she. — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “Why, what are you talking about?” answered she. Who acts: rent. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 9, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 9, sentence 71

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“Why, what are you talking about?” answered she.

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**Who acts:** rent · **What happens:** talk about, answer · **To what, where:** rent · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 9. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (rent), 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:pg3282:9:71
# text = “Why, what are you talking about?” answered she.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	7	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
4	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	7	obl	_	_
5	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
6	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	talking	talk	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	11	advcl	_	_
8	about	about	ADP	IN	_	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
11	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **talk about** *in a quote* | present · progressive | rent |  |  |  |  |  | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **answer** *speech: ask* | past |  |  | rent |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent she=Eventuality |

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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 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.

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