---
title: ‘Whose is this castle, O herdsmen?’ asked the knights. — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Whose is this castle, O herdsmen?’ asked the knights. Who acts: castle. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 38, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 38, sentence 81

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‘Whose is this castle, O herdsmen?’ asked the knights.

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**Who acts:** castle · **What happens:** be, ask · **To what, where:** castle, knights

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 38. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (castle), 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:pg3454:38:81
# text = ‘Whose is this castle, O herdsmen?’ asked the knights.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Whose	whose	PRON	WP$	Poss=Yes|PronType=Rel	5	nmod:poss	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	5	det	_	_
5	castle	castle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	O	of	ADP	IN	Abbr=Yes	8	case	_	_
8	herdsmen	herdsman	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
11	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	knights	knight	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	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 | **is a** | present |  | this castle |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | this castle |  | the knights |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent knight=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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