---
title: Why didn't the good people of the town have cats? — More English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Why didn't the good people of the town have cats? Who acts: good people. A sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 1, 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/pg14241/15/12/)

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# More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 1, sentence 12

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Why didn't the good people of the town have cats?

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**Who acts:** good people · **What happens:** not have · **To what, where:** cats

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This is a sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (good people), 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:pg14241:15:12
# text = Why didn't the good people of the town have cats?
1	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	10	advmod	_	_
2	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	n't	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	10	advmod	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nsubj	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	town	town	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod	_	_
10	have	have	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
11	cats	cat	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **have** | past · do-support | the good people of the town | cats |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent cat=Patient |

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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:** «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 14241 (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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