---
title: She could only say, "Putty, putty, putty!" for she had not learned t… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: She could only say, "Putty, putty, putty!" for she had not learned to talk English. Who acts: queen. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, IV. the Cat., 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/pg18442/52/24/)

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, IV. the Cat., sentence 24

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She could only say, "Putty, putty, putty!" for she had not learned to talk English.

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**Who acts:** queen · **What happens:** say, not learn, talk · **To what, where:** Putty, English · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, IV. the Cat.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (queen), 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:pg18442:52:24
# text = She could only say, "Putty, putty, putty!" for she had not learned to talk English.
1	She	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	only	only	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
6	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	Putty	putty	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
9	putty	putty	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
11	putty	putty	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	11	punct	_	_
14	for	for	SCONJ	IN	_	18	mark	_	_
15	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
16	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	18	aux	_	_
17	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	18	advmod	_	_
18	learned	learn	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	4	advcl	_	_
19	to	to	PART	TO	_	20	mark	_	_
20	talk	talk	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	18	xcomp	_	_
21	English	English	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	20	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | could | queen | Putty and putty |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent putty=Topic |
| 2 | **not** **learn** | past · perfect | queen |  |  |  |  |  | vn learn-14-2-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 3 | **talk** | to-infinitive | queen *not said here* | English |  |  |  |  | vn compel-59.1 «NP V NP S\_ING»: agent=Agent english=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:** «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Project Gutenberg book 18442 (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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