---
title: The ratcatcher did not expect this treacherous stroke. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The ratcatcher did not expect this treacherous stroke. Who acts: ratcatcher. 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 63

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The ratcatcher did not expect this treacherous stroke.

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**Who acts:** ratcatcher · **What happens:** not expect · **To what, where:** treacherous stroke

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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 (ratcatcher), 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:pg540:32:63
# text = The ratcatcher did not expect this treacherous stroke.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	ratcatcher	ratcatcher	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	expect	expect	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	8	det	_	_
7	treacherous	treacherous	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	stroke	stroke	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **expect** | past · do-support | the ratcatcher | this treacherous stroke |  |  |  |  | vn conjecture-29.5-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent stroke=Theme |

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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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