---
title: ‘What’s the meaning of this?’ said she smiling. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘What’s the meaning of this?’ said she smiling. Who acts: duchess. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Graciosa and Percinet, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, Graciosa and Percinet, part 1, sentence 20

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‘What’s the meaning of this?’ said she smiling.

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**Who acts:** duchess · **What happens:** say, smile, mean · **To what, where:** this · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Graciosa and Percinet, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (duchess), 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:pg540:23:20
# text = ‘What’s the meaning of this?’ said she smiling.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	3	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	’s	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	ccomp	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	meaning	meaning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	5	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
10	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	smiling	smile	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	10	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **smile** | gerund | duchess |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **mean** |  |  | this |  |  |  |  | nom meaning «communication transitive»: of=patient |

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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 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.

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