---
title: ‘Well,’ said he, ‘how are the shifts getting on?’ — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Well,’ said he, ‘how are the shifts getting on?’ Who acts: Wolf, shifts. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nettle Spinner, 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/pg540/42/61/)

<!-- 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 Nettle Spinner](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/42/) / 61

# The Red Fairy Book, The Nettle Spinner, sentence 61

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘Well,’ said he, ‘how are the shifts getting on?’

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

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (Wolf, shifts), 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:pg540:42:61
# text = ‘Well,’ said he, ‘how are the shifts getting on?’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Well	well	INTJ	UH	_	5	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
5	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
8	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	12	advmod	_	_
10	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	cop	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	shifts	shift	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obl	_	_
13	getting	get	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	12	acl	_	_
14	on	on	ADP	RP	_	13	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Wolf |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is a** | present |  | the shifts |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **get on** | gerund | the shifts *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Experiencer |

<!-- .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 60](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/42/60/)
- next →: [sentence 62](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/42/62/)
- ↑ back to [The Nettle Spinner](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/42/)