---
title: “What were you doing, little man?” asked Rose-red. — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “What were you doing, little man?” asked Rose-red. Who acts: you, Rose. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Snow-white and Rose-red, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, Snow-white and Rose-red, sentence 45

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“What were you doing, little man?” asked Rose-red.

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**Who acts:** you, Rose · **What happens:** do, ask · **To what, where:** little man · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Snow-white and Rose-red. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, Rose), 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:pg503:36:45
# text = “What were you doing, little man?” asked Rose-red.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	5	obj	_	_
3	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	doing	do	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	11	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
11	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	Rose	Rose	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	red	red	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	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* | past · progressive | you | little man |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Eventuality |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | Rose |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V how 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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