---
title: ‘If only it were a little pussy cat!’ she said. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘If only it were a little pussy cat!’ she said. Who acts: sight, nightingale. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Swineherd, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Swineherd, sentence 14

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‘If only it were a little pussy cat!’ she said.

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**Who acts:** sight, nightingale · **What happens:** be, say · **To what, where:** little pussy cat · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Swineherd. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (sight, nightingale), 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:pg640:43:14
# text = ‘If only it were a little pussy cat!’ she said.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
3	only	only	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
5	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
7	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
8	pussy	pussy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	cat	cat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	_
12	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** *a condition, not said to happen* | past | sight | a little pussy cat |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | nightingale |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

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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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