---
title: ‘What on earth do you want here?’ said one of them to the old woman. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘What on earth do you want here?’ said one of them to the old woman. Who acts: you, one. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Master Thief, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Master Thief, sentence 166

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‘What on earth do you want here?’ said one of them to the old woman.

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**Who acts:** you, one · **What happens:** want, say · **To what, where:** earth · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Master Thief. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, one), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg540:876`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg540:9:166
# text = ‘What on earth do you want here?’ said one of them to the old woman.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	_
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	7	obj	_	_
3	on	on	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	earth	earth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nmod	_	_
5	do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
6	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	want	want	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	_
8	here	here	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	7	advmod	_	_
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
10	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	11	nsubj	_	_
13	of	of	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nmod	_	_
15	to	to	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
17	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	_
18	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	_
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **want** | present · do-support | you |  |  | earth; here |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot what=Theme |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | one of horses |  |  |  |  | to the old woman | vn indicate-78-1 «NP V PP.recipient whether/if S»: agent=Pivot to woman=Experiencer clause=Topic |

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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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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