---
title: ‘What is it, my brother?’ asked the wolf as it stood before him. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘What is it, my brother?’ asked the wolf as it stood before him. Who acts: brother, lock. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nine Pea-hens and the Golden Apples, 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/pg641/7/134/)

<!-- 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 Nine Pea-hens and the Golden Apples](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/7/) / 134

# The Violet Fairy Book, The Nine Pea-hens and the Golden Apples, sentence 134

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘What is it, my brother?’ asked the wolf as it stood before him.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** brother, lock · **What happens:** be, ask, stand · **To what, where:** brother, wolf

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nine Pea-hens and the Golden Apples. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (brother, lock), 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:pg641:7:134
# text = ‘What is it, my brother?’ asked the wolf as it stood before him.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	7	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
6	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	brother	brother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
10	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	wolf	wolf	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
13	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	15	mark	_	_
14	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
15	stood	stand	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	advcl	_	_
16	before	before	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present |  | my brother |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | my brother | the wolf |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent wolf=Recipient |
| 3 | **stand** | past | lock |  |  |  | before prince |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent before he=Location |

<!-- .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 133](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/7/133/)
- next →: [sentence 135](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/7/135/)
- ↑ back to [The Nine Pea-hens and the Golden Apples](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/7/)