---
title: And the sultan was told, ‘The cat has caught a child.’ — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: And the sultan was told, ‘The cat has caught a child.’ Who acts: cat. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nunda, Eater of People, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Nunda, Eater of People, sentence 160

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And the sultan was told, ‘The cat has caught a child.’

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**Who acts:** cat · **What happens:** tell, catch · **To what, where:** sultan, child · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nunda, Eater of People. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (cat), 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:pg641:29:160
# text = And the sultan was told, ‘The cat has caught a child.’
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	sultan	sultan	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj:pass	_	_
4	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux:pass	_	_
5	told	tell	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
7	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	cat	cat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
10	has	have	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	caught	catch	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	5	conj	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past · passive |  | the sultan |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: subject=Recipient |
| 2 | **catch** | present · perfect | the cat | a child |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent child=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 Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 641 (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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