---
title: ‘I caught it robbing me, and it shall suffer the doom of a thief.’ — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘I caught it robbing me, and it shall suffer the doom of a thief.’ Who acts: I, reptile. 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/pg3454/35/99/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 35, sentence 99

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‘I caught it robbing me, and it shall suffer the doom of a thief.’

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

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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, reptile), 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:pg3454:35:99
# text = ‘I caught it robbing me, and it shall suffer the doom of a thief.’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	caught	catch	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	_
5	robbing	rob	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	3	advcl	_	_
6	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
9	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
10	shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	suffer	suffer	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	doom	doom	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
14	of	of	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	thief	thief	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **catch** | past | I | reptile |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme |
| 2 | **rob** | gerund | I *not said here* | me |  |  |  |  | vn cheat-10.6.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent i=Source |
| 3 | **suffer** | shall | reptile | the doom of a thief |  |  |  |  | vn admire-31.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer doom=Stimulus |
| 4 | **doom** |  |  | a thief |  |  |  |  | nom doom «event transitive»: of=patient |

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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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