---
title: ‘Why didn’t you come?’ he asked the pretty spinner. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Why didn’t you come?’ he asked the pretty spinner. Who acts: you, Count. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nettle Spinner, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Nettle Spinner, sentence 20

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‘Why didn’t you come?’ he asked the pretty spinner.

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**Who acts:** you, Count · **What happens:** not come, ask · **To what, where:** pretty spinner

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nettle Spinner. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, Count), 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:pg540:42:20
# text = ‘Why didn’t you come?’ he asked the pretty spinner.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	4	advmod	_	_
3	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
5	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	come	come	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
9	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	obl	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	pretty	pretty	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	spinner	spinner	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **come** | present | you |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | Count | the pretty spinner |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent spinner=Recipient |

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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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