---
title: The witch asked, ‘Countryman, who are you, and what is your business?’ — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The witch asked, ‘Countryman, who are you, and what is your business?’ Who acts: witch, Countryman. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/10/79/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Donkey Cabbage, part 1, sentence 79

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The witch asked, ‘Countryman, who are you, and what is your business?’

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**Who acts:** witch, Countryman · **What happens:** ask, be · **To what, where:** Countryman, you, business

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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 (witch, Countryman), 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:pg640:10:79
# text = The witch asked, ‘Countryman, who are you, and what is your business?’
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	witch	witch	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
5	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	Countryman	Countryman	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	10	nsubj	_	_
9	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
10	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
13	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	16	nsubj	_	_
14	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	16	cop	_	_
15	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	16	nmod:poss	_	_
16	business	business	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	16	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	16	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 witch | Countryman |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is a** | present | Countryman | you |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **is a** | present |  | your business |  |  |  |  | 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 Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 640 (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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