---
title: ‘What sort of a riddle is it?’ she asked. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘What sort of a riddle is it?’ she asked. Who acts: sort. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Dragon and His Grandmother, 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/pg640/9/51/)

<!-- 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 Dragon and His Grandmother](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/9/) / 51

# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Dragon and His Grandmother, sentence 51

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘What sort of a riddle is it?’ she asked.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** sort · **What happens:** be, ask, sort · **To what, where:** riddle · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Dragon and His Grandmother. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (sort), 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:pg640:9:51
# text = ‘What sort of a riddle is it?’ she asked.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	DET	WDT	PronType=Int	3	det	_	_
3	sort	sort	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
4	of	of	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	riddle	riddle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	_
7	is	be	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	ccomp	_	_
8	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	expl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
11	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | present | what sort of a riddle | riddle |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | sort |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **sort** |  |  | a riddle |  |  |  |  | nom sort «cognition transitive»: of=patient |

<!-- .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 50](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/9/50/)
- next →: [sentence 52](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/9/52/)
- ↑ back to [The Dragon and His Grandmother](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/9/)