---
title: ‘Ask him why he does it,’ replied the hermit. — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Ask him why he does it,’ replied the hermit. Who acts: you, man. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 19, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg5615/19/94/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 19, sentence 94

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‘Ask him why he does it,’ replied the hermit.

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**Who acts:** you, man · **What happens:** ask, do, reply · **To what, where:** man, mouthful, hermit · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 19. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, man), 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:pg5615:19:94
# text = ‘Ask him why he does it,’ replied the hermit.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Ask	ask	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	obj	_	_
4	why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	6	advmod	_	_
5	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	does	do	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	ccomp	_	_
7	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	10	punct	_	_
10	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	hermit	hermit	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ask** *speech: ask* | imperative | you *not said here* |  | man |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP whether S»: agent=Agent he=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **do** | present | man | mouthful |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Eventuality |
| 3 | **reply** *speech: assert* | past | you *not said here* | the hermit |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent hermit=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 Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 5615 (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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