---
title: While it was browning at the fire, Tubby inquired for his goose a se… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: While it was browning at the fire, Tubby inquired for his goose a second time. Who acts: chief, Tubby. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Canary, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Enchanted Canary, sentence 257

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
While it was browning at the fire, Tubby inquired for his goose a second time.

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**Who acts:** chief, Tubby · **What happens:** brown, inquire · **To what, where:** fire

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Canary. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (chief, Tubby), 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:pg540:40:257
# text = While it was browning at the fire, Tubby inquired for his goose a second time.
1	While	while	SCONJ	IN	_	4	mark	_	_
2	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	browning	brown	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	10	advcl	_	_
5	at	at	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	fire	fire	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
9	Tubby	Tubby	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
10	inquired	inquire	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	for	for	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	goose	goose	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
15	second	second	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos|NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	16	amod	_	_
16	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **brown** | past · progressive | chief |  |  | the fire |  |  | vn cooking-45.3 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient |
| 2 | **inquire** *speech: other* | past | Tubby |  |  |  | time | for goose's goose | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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