---
title: ‘Pussy, grey pussy, tell us how we are to get away from the witch?’ — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Pussy, grey pussy, tell us how we are to get away from the witch?’ Who acts: Pussy grey pussy, we. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Witch (28), with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Witch (28), sentence 44

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‘Pussy, grey pussy, tell us how we are to get away from the witch?’

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**Who acts:** Pussy grey pussy, we · **What happens:** tell, be · **To what, where:** us · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Witch (28). The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Pussy grey pussy, we), 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:pg640:39:44
# text = ‘Pussy, grey pussy, tell us how we are to get away from the witch?’
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Pussy	pussy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	grey	grey	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	pussy	pussy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
7	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
8	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	iobj	_	_
9	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	13	advmod	_	_
10	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
11	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
13	get	get	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	advcl	_	_
14	away	away	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
15	from	from	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	witch	witch	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | infinitive | Pussy grey pussy |  | us |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent we=Recipient |
| 2 | **is** | present | we |  |  |  |  | from the witch; away, get *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:** «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 640 (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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