---
title: So the cat said, “They are beautiful.” — Russian Folk-Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: So the cat said, “They are beautiful.” Who acts: cat, eyes. A sentence of «Russian Folk-Tales» by A. N. Afanas'ev, Opening, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Russian Folk-Tales, Opening, part 3, sentence 108

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So the cat said, “They are beautiful.”

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**Who acts:** cat, eyes · **What happens:** say, be · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Russian Folk-Tales» by A. N. Afanas'ev, Opening, 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 (cat, eyes), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg62509:3:108
# text = So the cat said, “They are beautiful.”
1	So	so	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	cat	cat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
6	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
8	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
9	beautiful	beautiful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	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 | the cat |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is** *in a quote* | present | eyes *= eye* |  |  |  |  | beautiful *property* | 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:** «Russian Folk-Tales» by A. N. Afanas'ev, Project Gutenberg book 62509 (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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