---
title: ‘What do you mean about a washerman’s donkey? — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘What do you mean about a washerman’s donkey? Who acts: you. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 5, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 5, sentence 92

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‘What do you mean about a washerman’s donkey?

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** mean

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 5. 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:pg3454:5:92
# text = ‘What do you mean about a washerman’s donkey?
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	5	obj	_	_
3	do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	mean	mean	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	about	about	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	washerman	washerman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	’s	's	PART	POS	_	8	case	_	_
10	donkey	donkey	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **mean** | present · do-support | you |  |  |  |  | about a washerman's donkey | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Topic |

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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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