---
title: ‘Who is there?’ says the Wolf, softening his rough voice as best he… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Who is there?’ says the Wolf, softening his rough voice as best he can. Who acts: Wolf. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The True History of Little Golden Hood, 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/pg540/33/45/)

<!-- 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 True History of Little Golden Hood](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/33/) / 45

# The Red Fairy Book, The True History of Little Golden Hood, sentence 45

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘Who is there?’ says the Wolf, softening his rough voice as best he can.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Wolf · **What happens:** be, say, soften · **To what, where:** rough voice · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The True History of Little Golden Hood. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Wolf), 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:pg540:33:45
# text = ‘Who is there?’ says the Wolf, softening his rough voice as best he can.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	3	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	ccomp	_	_
4	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	3	expl	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
7	says	say	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	Wolf	Wolf	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
11	softening	soften	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	7	advcl	_	_
12	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
13	rough	rough	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	voice	voice	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
15	as	as	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	best	good	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	11	obj	_	_
17	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
18	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	16	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | present |  |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | present | the Wolf |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **soften** | gerund | the Wolf *not said here* | story's rough voice |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

<!-- .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 44](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/33/44/)
- next →: [sentence 46](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/33/46/)
- ↑ back to [The True History of Little Golden Hood](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/33/)