---
title: He rode straight up to him, and asked if he had seen anyone hiding a… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He rode straight up to him, and asked if he had seen anyone hiding anywhere about in a wood that was close by. Who acts: Governor, wood. 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 211

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He rode straight up to him, and asked if he had seen anyone hiding anywhere about in a wood that was close by.

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**Who acts:** Governor, wood · **What happens:** ride, ask, see, hide, be · **To what, where:** harm, anyone, wood

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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 (Governor, wood), 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:pg540:916`): 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:pg540:9:211
# text = He rode straight up to him, and asked if he had seen anyone hiding anywhere about in a wood that was close by.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	rode	ride	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	straight	straight	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	up	up	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
5	to	to	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	obl	_	_
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
10	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
11	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
12	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
13	seen	see	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	9	ccomp	_	_
14	anyone	anyone	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	13	obj	_	_
15	hiding	hide	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	14	acl	_	_
16	anywhere	anywhere	ADV	RB	PronType=Ind	15	advmod	_	_
17	about	about	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
18	in	in	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
19	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	wood	wood	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	obl	_	_
21	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	23	nsubj	_	_
22	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	23	cop	_	_
23	close	close	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	20	acl:relcl	_	_
24	by	by	ADV	RB	_	23	advmod	_	_
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ride** | past | Governor |  | harm |  |  |  | vn nonvehicle-51.4.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent to he=Trajectory |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | Governor *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **see** *a condition, not said to happen* | past · perfect | Governor | anyone |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer anyone=Stimulus |
| 4 | **hide** | gerund |  |  |  | a wood |  | about, anywhere *property* | vn concealment-16-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent in wood=Location |
| 5 | **is** | past | a wood |  |  |  |  | close *property* | tree rules |

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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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