---
title: “Don’t cry,” answered the cat, laying her paw on her mistress’s arm. — The Brown Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “Don’t cry,” answered the cat, laying her paw on her mistress’s arm. Who acts: you, cat. A sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 27, 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/pg3282/27/104/)

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# The Brown Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, part 27, sentence 104

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“Don’t cry,” answered the cat, laying her paw on her mistress’s arm.

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**Who acts:** you, cat · **What happens:** not cry, answer, lay · **To what, where:** paw, arm · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Brown Fairy Book, part 27. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, cat), 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:pg3282:27:104
# text = “Don’t cry,” answered the cat, laying her paw on her mistress’s arm.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Do	do	AUX	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	n’t	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	cry	cry	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
7	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	cat	cat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
11	laying	lay	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	advcl	_	_
12	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	paw	paw	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
14	on	on	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
15	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	16	nmod:poss	_	_
16	mistress	mistress	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	’s	's	PART	POS	_	16	case	_	_
18	arm	arm	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **cry** *speech: express* *in a quote* | imperative · do-support | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | the cat |  |  |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **lay** | gerund | you *not said here* | Cat's paw |  | Cat's mistress's arm |  |  | vn put\_spatial-9.2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent paw=Theme on arm=Destination |

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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 Brown Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3282 (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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