---
title: She told me it had spots like a civet-cat, and this has spots like a… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: She told me it had spots like a civet-cat, and this has spots like a civet-cat.’ Who acts: mother, spear, this. 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.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/29/203/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Violet Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/) / [The Nunda, Eater of People](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/29/) / 203

# The Violet Fairy Book, The Nunda, Eater of People, sentence 203

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
She told me it had spots like a civet-cat, and this has spots like a civet-cat.’

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** mother, spear, this · **What happens:** tell, have · **To what, where:** me, spots · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (mother, spear, this), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg641:29:203
# text = She told me it had spots like a civet-cat, and this has spots like a civet-cat.’
1	She	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	iobj	_	_
4	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	ccomp	_	_
6	spots	spot	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obj	_	_
7	like	like	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
9	civet	civet	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	cat	cat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
14	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	15	nsubj	_	_
15	has	have	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	ccomp	_	_
16	spots	spot	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	obj	_	_
17	like	like	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
18	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
19	civet	civet	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	19	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	cat	cat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	15	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | mother |  | me |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent i=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **have** | past | spear | spots |  |  |  | like a civet cat | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent spot=Patient |
| 3 | **have** | present | this | spots |  |  |  | like a civet cat | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent spot=Patient |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 202](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/29/202/)
- next →: [sentence 204](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/29/204/)
- ↑ back to [The Nunda, Eater of People](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg641/29/)