---
title: And on his return the old fellow asked what it all meant. — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: And on his return the old fellow asked what it all meant. Who acts: old fellow, heart, husband. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, part 22, 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/pg5615/22/30/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 22, sentence 30

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And on his return the old fellow asked what it all meant.

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**Who acts:** old fellow, heart, husband · **What happens:** ask, mean, return · **To what, where:** return · **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 22. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (old fellow, heart, husband), 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:pg5615:22:30
# text = And on his return the old fellow asked what it all meant.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
2	on	on	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
3	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	return	return	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	fellow	fellow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
8	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	12	obj	_	_
10	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
11	all	all	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	meant	mean	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | the old fellow |  |  | husband's return |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **mean** | past | heart |  |  |  |  | all *property* | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Topic |
| 3 | **return** |  | husband |  |  |  |  |  | nom return «communication intransitive»: poss=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 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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