---
title: ‘I am about to hang a thief that I caught robbing me!’ — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘I am about to hang a thief that I caught robbing me!’ Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 35, 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/pg3454/35/94/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 35, sentence 94

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‘I am about to hang a thief that I caught robbing me!’

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** hang, catch, rob · **To what, where:** thief, me

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 35. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), 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:pg3454:35:94
# text = ‘I am about to hang a thief that I caught robbing me!’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
3	am	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
4	about	about	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	hang	hang	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	thief	thief	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
9	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	11	obj	_	_
10	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	caught	catch	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	acl:relcl	_	_
12	robbing	rob	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	11	xcomp	_	_
13	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hang** | present | I | a thief |  |  |  | about *property* | vn poison-42.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent thief=Patient |
| 2 | **catch** | past | I | a thief |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **rob** | gerund | I *not said here* | me |  |  |  |  | vn cheat-10.6.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent i=Source |

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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 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.

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