---
title: He said that he had found something much rarer--a white cat! — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He said that he had found something much rarer--a white cat! Who acts: prince. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The White Cat, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The White Cat, part 3, sentence 11

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He said that he had found something much rarer--a white cat!

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**Who acts:** prince · **What happens:** say, find · **To what, where:** something · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The White Cat, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (prince), 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:pg503:25:11
# text = He said that he had found something much rarer--a white cat!
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
4	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
5	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
6	found	find	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	2	ccomp	_	_
7	something	something	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	6	obj	_	_
8	much	much	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
9	rarer	rare	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	6	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	white	white	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	cat	cat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | prince |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **find** | past · perfect | prince | something |  |  |  | a white cat *obl*; rare *property* | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent something=Topic |

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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 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.

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