---
title: ‘What is it?’ asked Houarn, beginning to feel uncomfortable. — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘What is it?’ asked Houarn, beginning to feel uncomfortable. Who acts: fish. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 34, 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/pg3454/34/36/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 34, sentence 36

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‘What is it?’ asked Houarn, beginning to feel uncomfortable.

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**Who acts:** fish · **What happens:** be, ask, begin, feel · **To what, where:** fish, Houarn

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 34. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (fish), 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:pg3454:34:36
# text = ‘What is it?’ asked Houarn, beginning to feel uncomfortable.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	4	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
7	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	Houarn	Houarn	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
10	beginning	begin	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	7	advcl	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
12	feel	feel	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	xcomp	_	_
13	uncomfortable	uncomfortable	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present |  | fish |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | fish |  | Houarn |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent houarn=Recipient |
| 3 | **begin** | gerund | fish *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 4 | **feel** | to-infinitive | fish *not said here* |  |  |  |  | uncomfortable *property* | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V ADJ»: agent=Stimulus |

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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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