---
title: But he answered as before, ‘The cat is mine and the people are mine.’ — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But he answered as before, ‘The cat is mine and the people are mine.’ Who acts: cat, people. 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 169

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But he answered as before, ‘The cat is mine and the people are mine.’

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**Who acts:** cat, people · **What happens:** answer, be · **To what, where:** mine

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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, people), 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:pg641:29:169
# text = But he answered as before, ‘The cat is mine and the people are mine.’
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	as	as	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	before	before	ADV	RB	_	3	obl	_	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	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
11	mine	my	PRON	PRP	Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	3	parataxis	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	nsubj	_	_
15	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	16	cop	_	_
16	mine	my	PRON	PRP	Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | cat |  |  |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is a** | present | the cat | mine |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **is a** | present | the people | mine |  |  |  |  | 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 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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