---
title: ‘What is that?’ says the Queen. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘What is that?’ says the Queen. Who acts: that, Queen. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Black Thief and Knight of the Glen., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Black Thief and Knight of the Glen., sentence 27

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‘What is that?’ says the Queen.

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**Who acts:** that, Queen · **What happens:** be, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Black Thief and Knight of the Glen.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (that, Queen), 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:pg540:8:27
# text = ‘What is that?’ says the Queen.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	7	obj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	cop	_	_
4	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	2	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	2	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	Queen	Queen	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | that |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | present | the Queen |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: 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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- ← previous: [sentence 26](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/8/26/)
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