---
title: And this is why the country girls go about singing: — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: And this is why the country girls go about singing: Who acts: this, country girls. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/2/202/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Red Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/) / [The Twelve Dancing Princesses](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/2/) / 202

# The Red Fairy Book, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, sentence 202

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
And this is why the country girls go about singing:

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** this, country girls · **What happens:** be, go, sing

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Twelve Dancing Princesses. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (this, country girls), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg540:2:202
# text = And this is why the country girls go about singing:
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	4	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	8	advmod	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	country	country	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	compound	_	_
7	girls	girl	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nsubj	_	_
8	go	go	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	about	about	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
10	singing	sing	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	8	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | this |  |  |  |  | why *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **go** | present | the country girls |  |  |  |  |  | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **sing** *speech: express* | gerund | the country girls *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 540 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 201](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/2/201/)
- next →: [sentence 203](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/2/203/)
- ↑ back to [The Twelve Dancing Princesses](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/2/)