---
title: The servant asked Jack what he was doing up there. — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The servant asked Jack what he was doing up there. Who acts: servant, Jack. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Jack My Hedgehog, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/48/37/)

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# The Green Fairy Book, Jack My Hedgehog, sentence 37

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The servant asked Jack what he was doing up there.

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**Who acts:** servant, Jack · **What happens:** ask, do up · **To what, where:** Jack · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Jack My Hedgehog. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (servant, Jack), 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:pg7277:48:37
# text = The servant asked Jack what he was doing up there.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	servant	servant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	Jack	Jack	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	iobj	_	_
5	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	8	obj	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
7	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	doing	do	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	3	ccomp	_	_
9	up	up	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
10	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	8	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | the servant |  | Jack |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP whether S»: agent=Agent jack=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **do up** | past · progressive | Jack |  |  | there |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Eventuality |

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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 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.

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