---
title: ‘Someone has eaten our dinner again,’ cried they. — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Someone has eaten our dinner again,’ cried they. Who acts: Someone, men. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 16, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3454/16/89/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Lilac Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3454/) / [The Lilac Fairy Book, part 16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3454/16/) / 89

# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 16, sentence 89

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘Someone has eaten our dinner again,’ cried they.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Someone, men · **What happens:** eat, cry · **To what, where:** dinner

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 16. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Someone, men), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg3454:16:89
# text = ‘Someone has eaten our dinner again,’ cried they.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Someone	someone	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	4	nsubj	_	_
3	has	have	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	eaten	eat	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	our	our	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
6	dinner	dinner	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	again	again	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	10	punct	_	_
10	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	conj	_	_
11	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **eat** | present · perfect | Someone | our dinner |  |  | again |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent dinner=Patient |
| 2 | **cry** *speech: express* | past | men *= man* |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3454 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 88](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3454/16/88/)
- next →: [sentence 90](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3454/16/90/)
- ↑ back to [The Lilac Fairy Book, part 16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3454/16/)