---
title: ‘Is there anything behind you?’ asked the minister. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Is there anything behind you?’ asked the minister. Who acts: anything. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Headless Dwarfs, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Headless Dwarfs, sentence 68

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‘Is there anything behind you?’ asked the minister.

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**Who acts:** anything · **What happens:** be, ask · **To what, where:** anything, minister

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Headless Dwarfs. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (anything), 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:pg641:33:68
# text = ‘Is there anything behind you?’ asked the minister.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
4	anything	anything	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	9	nsubj	_	_
5	behind	behind	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	4	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
9	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	minister	minister	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present |  | anything |  |  |  | behind you | tree rules |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | anything | the minister |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent minister=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 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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