---
title: Did they speak?" asked the kitchen-cat. — Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen · tree and pragmatics
description: Did they speak?" asked the kitchen-cat. Who acts: miller. A sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, VI. the Visit to the Mill, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, VI. the Visit to the Mill, sentence 56

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Did they speak?" asked the kitchen-cat.

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**Who acts:** miller · **What happens:** speak, ask · **To what, where:** kitchen cat · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, VI. the Visit to the Mill. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (miller), 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:pg27200:57:56
# text = Did they speak?" asked the kitchen-cat.
1	Did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	speak	speak	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
6	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
8	kitchen	kitchen	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	cat	cat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **speak** *speech: other* | past · do-support | miller |  |  |  |  |  | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* *in a quote* | past |  |  | the kitchen cat |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP whether S»: agent=Agent cat=Recipient clause=Topic |

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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:** «Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen» by H. C. Andersen, Project Gutenberg book 27200 (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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