---
title: But the White Cat shook her head and sighed deeply in answer. — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But the White Cat shook her head and sighed deeply in answer. Who acts: White Cat. 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/pg503/23/73/)

<!-- 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/) / 73

# The Blue Fairy Book, The White Cat, part 1, sentence 73

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
But the White Cat shook her head and sighed deeply in answer.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** White Cat · **What happens:** shake, sigh · **To what, where:** head

<!-- .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 (White Cat), 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:pg503:23:73
# text = But the White Cat shook her head and sighed deeply in answer.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	White	white	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	Cat	cat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
5	shook	shake	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	sighed	sigh	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
10	deeply	deeply	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
11	in	in	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	answer	answer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **shake** | past | the White Cat | place's head |  |  |  |  | vn shake-22.3-2 «NP V NP together»: agent=Agent head=Patient |
| 2 | **sigh** | past | the White Cat *not said here* |  |  |  |  | in answer; deeply *property* | vn nonverbal\_expression-40.2 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent in answer=Theme |

<!-- .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 72](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/23/72/)
- next →: [sentence 74](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/23/74/)
- ↑ back to [The White Cat, part 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/23/)