---
title: What could the little woman possibly mean by calling her a sorceress… — The Wonderful Wizard of Oz · tree and pragmatics
description: What could the little woman possibly mean by calling her a sorceress, and saying she had killed the Wicked Witch of the East? Who acts: little woman, woman. A sentence of «The Wonderful Wizard of Oz» by L. Frank Baum, Chapter II. The Council with the Munchkins, with its dependency tree and the pragm
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg55/3/26/)

<!-- 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 Wonderful Wizard of Oz](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg55/) / [Chapter II. The Council with the Munch…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg55/3/) / 26

# The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Chapter II. The Council with the Munchkins, sentence 26

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
What could the little woman possibly mean by calling her a sorceress, and saying she had killed the Wicked Witch of the East?

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** little woman, woman · **What happens:** mean, call, say, kill · **To what, where:** woman, Wicked Witch · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Wonderful Wizard of Oz» by L. Frank Baum, Chapter II. The Council with the Munchkins. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (little woman, woman), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg55:111`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg55:3:26
# text = What could the little woman possibly mean by calling her a sorceress, and saying she had killed the Wicked Witch of the East?
1	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	7	obj	_	_
2	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
6	possibly	possibly	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
7	mean	mean	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
8	by	by	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
9	calling	call	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	7	advcl	_	_
10	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	obj	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	sorceress	sorceress	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	xcomp	_	_
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
14	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
15	saying	say	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	9	conj	_	_
16	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
17	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	18	aux	_	_
18	killed	kill	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	15	ccomp	_	_
19	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
20	Wicked	wicked	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	amod	_	_
21	Witch	witch	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obj	_	_
22	of	of	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
23	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	24	det	_	_
24	East	East	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	21	nmod	_	_
25	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **mean** | could | the little woman |  |  |  |  | possibly *property* | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Topic |
| 2 | **call** | gerund | the little woman *not said here* |  | woman |  |  |  | vn initiate\_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent she=Recipient |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | gerund | the little woman *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 4 | **kill** | past · perfect | woman | the Wicked Witch of the East |  |  |  |  | vn remove-10.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent witch=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 Wonderful Wizard of Oz» by L. Frank Baum, Project Gutenberg book 55 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 25](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg55/3/25/)
- next →: [sentence 27](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg55/3/27/)
- ↑ back to [Chapter II. The Council with the Munchkins](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg55/3/)