---
title: ‘What are you thinking of, my son?’ answered the old woman, aghast a… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘What are you thinking of, my son?’ answered the old woman, aghast at the idea. Who acts: you. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Magic Ring, 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/pg640/33/81/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Magic Ring, sentence 81

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‘What are you thinking of, my son?’ answered the old woman, aghast at the idea.

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** be, answer · **To what, where:** old woman · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Magic Ring. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you), 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:pg640:33:81
# text = ‘What are you thinking of, my son?’ answered the old woman, aghast at the idea.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	5	obj	_	_
3	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	thinking	think	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	12	ccomp	_	_
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
8	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	son	son	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
12	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
15	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
17	aghast	aghast	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
18	at	at	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
19	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	idea	idea	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | you |  |  |  |  | of my son; think *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past |  |  | the old woman |  |  |  | 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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