---
title: ‘And wherefore?’ asked Kai. — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘And wherefore?’ asked Kai. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 39, 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/pg3454/39/71/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 39, sentence 71

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‘And wherefore?’ asked Kai.

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**What happens:** ask · **To what, where:** Kai

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 39. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg3454:39:71
# text = ‘And wherefore?’ asked Kai.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
3	wherefore	wherefore	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	6	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
6	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	Kai	Kai	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past |  |  | Kai |  |  | wherefore *property* | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent kai=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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