---
title: ‘What’s that you’re humming?’ asked the old man. — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘What’s that you’re humming?’ asked the old man. Who acts: you. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 23, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3454/23/101/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 23, sentence 101

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‘What’s that you’re humming?’ asked the old man.

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** 're, hum, ask · **To what, where:** old man

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 23. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you), 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:pg3454:23:101
# text = ‘What’s that you’re humming?’ asked the old man.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	3	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	’s	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
5	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	’re	're	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	advcl	_	_
7	humming	hum	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	6	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
10	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	advcl	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **'re** | past | you |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **hum** | gerund | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn bulge-47.5.3 «NP V»: agent=Location |
| 3 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past |  |  | the old man |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent man=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 Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3454 (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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