---
title: ‘What can this be?’ thought he. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘What can this be?’ thought he. Who acts: this. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, How a Fish Swam in the Air and a Hare in the Water., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, How a Fish Swam in the Air and a Hare in the Water., sentence 7

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‘What can this be?’ thought he.

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**Who acts:** this · **What happens:** be, think · **To what, where:** back

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, How a Fish Swam in the Air and a Hare in the Water.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (this), 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:pg641:16:7
# text = ‘What can this be?’ thought he.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	8	obj	_	_
3	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
4	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	8	nsubj	_	_
5	be	be	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	4	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
8	thought	think	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **think** *speech: other* | can | this | back |  |  |  |  | vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V NP ADJ»: agent=Agent what=Theme he=Attribute |

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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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