---
title: ‘How can you ask such a thing?’ answered the old man indignantly. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘How can you ask such a thing?’ answered the old man indignantly. Who acts: you. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Envious Neighbour, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Envious Neighbour, sentence 14

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‘How can you ask such a thing?’ answered the old man indignantly.

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** ask, answer · **To what, where:** thing, old man · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Envious Neighbour. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you), 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:pg641:18:14
# text = ‘How can you ask such a thing?’ answered the old man indignantly.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	5	advmod	_	_
3	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	ask	ask	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	_
6	such	such	DET	PDT	PronType=Ind	8	det:predet	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
11	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
15	indignantly	indignantly	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ask** *speech: ask* | can | you | such thing |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent thing=Recipient |
| 2 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past |  |  | the old man |  |  | indignantly *property* | tree rules |

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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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