---
title: “They must feel very secure against robbers,” he said to himself. — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: “They must feel very secure against robbers,” he said to himself. Who acts: stories, two. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The White Cat, part 1, 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/pg503/23/21/)

<!-- 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 Blue Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/) / [The White Cat, part 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/23/) / 21

# The Blue Fairy Book, The White Cat, part 1, sentence 21

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
“They must feel very secure against robbers,” he said to himself.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** stories, two · **What happens:** feel, say · **To what, where:** two · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The White Cat, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (stories, two), 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:pg503:23:21
# text = “They must feel very secure against robbers,” he said to himself.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	feel	feel	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	ccomp	_	_
5	very	very	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	secure	secure	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	xcomp	_	_
7	against	against	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	robbers	robber	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
11	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	to	to	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	himself	himself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **feel** *in a quote* | must | stories *= story* |  |  |  |  | secure *property* | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V ADJ»: agent=Stimulus |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | two |  | two |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V PP.recipient S-Quote»: agent=Agent to himself=Recipient clause=Topic |

<!-- .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 Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 503 (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 20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/23/20/)
- next →: [sentence 22](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/23/22/)
- ↑ back to [The White Cat, part 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/23/)