---
title: “What is to be done?” said the Queen. — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “What is to be done?” said the Queen. Who acts: Queen. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Bronze Ring, 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/pg503/2/183/)

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Bronze Ring, sentence 183

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“What is to be done?” said the Queen.

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**Who acts:** Queen · **What happens:** do, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Bronze Ring. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Queen), 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:pg503:2:183
# text = “What is to be done?” said the Queen.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	6	obj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux:pass	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
5	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	aux:pass	_	_
6	done	do	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	9	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	Queen	Queen	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **do** *in a quote* | present · passive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: what=Eventuality |
| 2 | **say** *speech: ask* | past | the Queen |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=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 Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 503 (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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