---
title: ‘Mother, what are you doing?’ cried she. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Mother, what are you doing?’ cried she. Who acts: you, Mother. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Halfman, 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/pg641/41/38/)

<!-- 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 Violet Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/) / [The Story of Halfman](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/41/) / 38

# The Violet Fairy Book, The Story of Halfman, sentence 38

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘Mother, what are you doing?’ cried she.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** you, Mother · **What happens:** do, cry · **To what, where:** Mother, ogress

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Halfman. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, Mother), 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:pg641:41:38
# text = ‘Mother, what are you doing?’ cried she.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
4	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	7	obj	_	_
5	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
6	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	doing	do	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	2	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
10	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **do** | present · progressive | you | Mother |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Eventuality |
| 2 | **cry** *speech: express* | past | Mother | ogress |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent she=Topic |

<!-- .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 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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 37](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/41/37/)
- next →: [sentence 39](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/41/39/)
- ↑ back to [The Story of Halfman](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/41/)