---
title: ‘Why are you standing there looking so sad?’ asked the Hunter. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Why are you standing there looking so sad?’ asked the Hunter. Who acts: you, Hunter. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Donkey Cabbage, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Donkey Cabbage, part 1, sentence 42

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‘Why are you standing there looking so sad?’ asked the Hunter.

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**Who acts:** you, Hunter · **What happens:** stand, look, ask · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Donkey Cabbage, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, Hunter), 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:pg640:638`): 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:pg640:10:42
# text = ‘Why are you standing there looking so sad?’ asked the Hunter.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	_
2	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	5	advmod	_	_
3	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	standing	stand	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	12	ccomp	_	_
6	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	5	advmod	_	_
7	looking	look	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	5	advcl	_	_
8	so	so	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
9	sad	sad	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	xcomp	_	_
10	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
11	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
12	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	Hunter	Hunter	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stand** | present · progressive | you |  |  | there |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **look** | gerund | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  | sad *property* | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V ADJ»: agent=Stimulus |
| 3 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | the Hunter |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent 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 Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 640 (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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