---
title: ‘What shall I do down there?’ asked the Soldier. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘What shall I do down there?’ asked the Soldier. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Tinder-box, 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/pg640/46/15/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Tinder-box, sentence 15

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‘What shall I do down there?’ asked the Soldier.

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**What happens:** ask · **To what, where:** Soldier

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Tinder-box. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg640:46:15
# text = ‘What shall I do down there?’ asked the Soldier.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	10	nsubj	_	_
3	shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
4	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
5	do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
6	down	down	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
7	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	2	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
10	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	Soldier	Soldier	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	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 Soldier |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent soldier=Recipient |

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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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