---
title: “What was that you were singing, my good woman?” — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “What was that you were singing, my good woman?” Who acts: you. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Tom Tit Tot, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, Tom Tit Tot, sentence 22

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“What was that you were singing, my good woman?”

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** sing · **To what, where:** good woman

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Tom Tit Tot. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you), 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:pg7439:5:22
# text = “What was that you were singing, my good woman?”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	7	obj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
4	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
5	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
6	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
7	singing	sing	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
10	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sing** *speech: express* *in a quote* | past · progressive | you | my good woman |  |  |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location what=Theme |

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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:** «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7439 (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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- ← previous: [sentence 21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7439/5/21/)
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