---
title: You let a strange cat sniff a finger held low and stroke it only if… — Cats and dogs up close · tree and pragmatics
description: You let a strange cat sniff a finger held low and stroke it only if it rubs against you. Who acts: You, strange cat, finger. A sentence of the lesson «Cats and dogs up close» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school 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/school/everyday/61-cats-and-dogs-up-close/11/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Everyday](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/) / [Cats and dogs up close](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/61-cats-and-dogs-up-close/) / 11

# Cats and dogs up close, sentence 11

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
You let a strange cat sniff a finger held low and stroke it only if it rubs against you.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** You, strange cat, finger · **What happens:** let, sniff, hold, stroke, rub · **To what, where:** finger

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Cats and dogs up close» of the everyday course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (You, strange cat, finger), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:everyday:061-cats-and-dogs-up-close.lesson:11
# text = You let a strange cat sniff a finger held low and stroke it only if it rubs against you.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = everyday
# lesson = 061-cats-and-dogs-up-close.lesson
# annotation = Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): no change
1	You	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	let	let	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	strange	strange	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	cat	cat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
6	sniff	sniff	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	finger	finger	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
9	held	hold	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	8	acl	_	_
10	low	low	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	9	advmod	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
12	stroke	stroke	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	conj	_	_
13	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	obj	_	_
14	only	only	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	_
15	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	17	mark	_	_
16	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
17	rubs	rub	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	advcl	_	_
18	against	against	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
19	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	17	obl	_	_
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: statement
- act: suggest
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: changed act=suggest

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **let** | past | You |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **sniff** | infinitive | a strange cat | a finger |  |  |  |  | vn nonverbal\_expression-40.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent finger=Theme |
| 3 | **hold** | participle |  | a finger *not said here* |  |  |  | low *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **stroke** | infinitive | a strange cat *not said here* | finger |  |  |  |  | vn touch-20-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme |
| 5 | **rub** *a condition, not said to happen* | present | finger |  |  |  |  | against you | vn spray-9.7-1 «NP V PP.destination»: agent=Theme against you=Destination |

<!-- .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 -->

**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)**, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, `mova-school-agreed-en.conllu`) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence `school:everyday:061-cats-and-dogs-up-close.lesson:11`.

**The tree:** Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): no change. **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.

See the [release 0.4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [Cats and dogs up close, 10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/61-cats-and-dogs-up-close/10/)
- next →: [Cats and dogs up close, 12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/61-cats-and-dogs-up-close/12/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/everyday/61-cats-and-dogs-up-close/)