---
title: They were nine hundred and ninety thousand, nine hundred and ninety-… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: They were nine hundred and ninety thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine, at one _gros_ a head. Who acts: rats. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Ratcatcher, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Ratcatcher, sentence 58

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They were nine hundred and ninety thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine, at one \_gros\_ a head.

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**Who acts:** rats · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** nine hundred

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Ratcatcher. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (rats), 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:pg540:32:58
# text = They were nine hundred and ninety thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine, at one _gros_ a head.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	nine	nine	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	4	compound	_	_
4	hundred	hundred	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	0	root	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
6	ninety	ninety	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	7	compound	_	_
7	thousand	thousand	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	nine	nine	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	10	compound	_	_
10	hundred	hundred	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	4	conj	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
12	ninety	ninety	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	14	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	nine	nine	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	10	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
16	at	at	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	4	conj	_	_
18	_	_	PUNCT	NFP	_	19	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	gros	gros	X	FW	Foreign=Yes	17	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	_	_	PUNCT	NFP	_	19	punct	_	_
21	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
22	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | rats *= rat* | nine hundred |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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 Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 540 (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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