---
title: He said to her, ‘Why have you come back alone? — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He said to her, ‘Why have you come back alone? Who acts: other two, you. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Three Snake-leaves, 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/pg7277/46/49/)

<!-- 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 Green Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/) / [The Three Snake-leaves](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/46/) / 49

# The Green Fairy Book, The Three Snake-leaves, sentence 49

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
He said to her, ‘Why have you come back alone?

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** other two, you · **What happens:** say, come back · **To what, where:** lady · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Three Snake-leaves. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (other two, you), 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:pg7277:46:49
# text = He said to her, ‘Why have you come back alone?
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
6	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	8	advmod	_	_
8	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
9	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	come	come	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
11	back	back	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
12	alone	alone	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | other two *= two* |  | lady |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V PP.recipient S-Quote»: agent=Agent to she=Recipient |
| 2 | **come back** | present | you |  |  |  |  | alone *property* | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .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 Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 7277 (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 48](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/46/48/)
- next →: [sentence 50](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/46/50/)
- ↑ back to [The Three Snake-leaves](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/46/)