---
title: And they answered, “We call it a cat.” — The Crimson Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: And they answered, “We call it a cat.” Who acts: eyes, We. A sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 18, 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/pg2435/18/20/)

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# The Crimson Fairy Book, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 18, sentence 20

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And they answered, “We call it a cat.”

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**Who acts:** eyes, We · **What happens:** answer, call · **To what, where:** creature · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 18. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (eyes, We), 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:pg2435:18:20
# text = And they answered, “We call it a cat.”
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
5	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	We	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	call	call	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	ccomp	_	_
8	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	cat	cat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | eyes *= eye* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **call** *in a quote* | present | We | creature |  |  |  |  | vn initiate\_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent it=Recipient |

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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:** «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 2435 (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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