---
title: Whatever went along that road the cat caught and ate. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Whatever went along that road the cat caught and ate. Who acts: Whatever, 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 167

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Whatever went along that road the cat caught and ate.

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**Who acts:** Whatever, cat · **What happens:** go, catch, eat · **To what, where:** road

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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 (Whatever, 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:pg641:29:167
# text = Whatever went along that road the cat caught and ate.
1	Whatever	whatever	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	2	nsubj	_	_
2	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	along	along	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	3	fixed	_	_
5	road	road	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	cat	cat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
8	caught	catch	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	ate	eat	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go** | past | Whatever |  |  | road |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme along road=Initial\_Location |
| 2 | **catch** | past | the cat |  |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **eat** | past | the cat *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V»: 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 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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