---
title: ‘Well, did you find them?’ asked the old man when his goblins came b… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Well, did you find them?’ asked the old man when his goblins came back. Who acts: you, goblins. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Grateful Prince, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Grateful Prince, part 3, sentence 30

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‘Well, did you find them?’ asked the old man when his goblins came back.

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**Who acts:** you, goblins · **What happens:** find, ask, come back · **To what, where:** stream, old man · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Grateful Prince, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, goblins), 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:pg641:11:30
# text = ‘Well, did you find them?’ asked the old man when his goblins came back.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Well	well	INTJ	UH	_	6	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
5	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	find	find	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	ccomp	_	_
7	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
10	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
14	when	when	SCONJ	WRB	_	17	mark	_	_
15	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	16	nmod:poss	_	_
16	goblins	goblin	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	17	nsubj	_	_
17	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	advcl	_	_
18	back	back	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **find** | past · do-support | you | stream |  |  |  |  | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Topic |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past |  |  | the old man |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP whether S»: agent=Agent man=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 3 | **come back** | past | man's goblins |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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 Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 641 (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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