---
title: "The bee's knees" and "the cat's pyjamas" meant something excellent… — Slang and how it changes with every generation · tree and pragmatics
description: "The bee's knees" and "the cat's pyjamas" meant something excellent in 1920s American slang; they were playful nonsense. Who acts: knees. A sentence of the lesson «Slang and how it changes with every generation» of the language course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmat
---

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# Slang and how it changes with every generation, sentence 10

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"The bee's knees" and "the cat's pyjamas" meant something excellent in 1920s American slang; they were playful nonsense.

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**Who acts:** knees · **What happens:** mean, be · **To what, where:** something, playful nonsense

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Slang and how it changes with every generation» of the language 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 (knees), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:language:017-slang-and-how-it-changes-with-every-generation.lesson:10
# text = "The bee's knees" and "the cat's pyjamas" meant something excellent in 1920s American slang; they were playful nonsense.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = language
# lesson = 017-slang-and-how-it-changes-with-every-generation.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): R1-cc-next ×1
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	_
2	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	bee	bee	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod:poss	_	_
4	's	's	PART	POS	_	3	case	_	_
5	knees	knee	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	nsubj	_	_
6	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	Agree=R1-cc-next|Haiku=5:cc
8	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	12	punct	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	cat	cat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nmod:poss	_	_
11	's	's	PART	POS	_	10	case	_	_
12	pyjamas	pyjama	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	conj	_	_
13	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	12	punct	_	_
14	meant	mean	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
15	something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	14	obj	_	_
16	excellent	excellent	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	15	amod	_	_
17	in	in	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	1920s	1920s	NOUN	NNS	Number=Ptan|NumForm=Combi|NumType=Card	14	obl	_	_
19	American	American	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	20	amod	_	_
20	slang	slang	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	appos	_	_
21	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	25	punct	_	_
22	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	25	nsubj	_	_
23	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	25	cop	_	_
24	playful	playful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	25	amod	_	_
25	nonsense	nonsense	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	parataxis	_	_
26	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **mean** | past | the bee's knees and the cat's pyjamas | something |  |  |  | in 1920s | vn representation-110.1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Pivot something=Theme in 1920s=Attribute |
| 2 | **is a** | past | knees *= knee* | playful nonsense |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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**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:language:017-slang-and-how-it-changes-with-every-generation.lesson:10`.

**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): R1-cc-next ×1. **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/).

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