---
title: ‘Indeed!’ said the old man; and what are they doing there?’ — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Indeed!’ said the old man; and what are they doing there?’ Who acts: men. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Blue Mountains, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/45/134/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Yellow Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/) / [The Blue Mountains](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/45/) / 134

# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Blue Mountains, sentence 134

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘Indeed!’ said the old man; and what are they doing there?’

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** men · **What happens:** say, do · **To what, where:** old man · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Blue Mountains. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (men), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg640:45:134
# text = ‘Indeed!’ said the old man; and what are they doing there?’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Indeed	indeed	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
5	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
11	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	14	obj	_	_
12	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
13	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
14	doing	do	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	5	parataxis	_	_
15	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	14	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past |  | the old man |  |  |  | indeed *property* | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent man=Topic |
| 2 | **do** | present · progressive | men *= man* |  |  | there |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Eventuality |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 133](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/45/133/)
- next →: [sentence 135](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/45/135/)
- ↑ back to [The Blue Mountains](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/45/)