---
title: A gentleman having given Dick a penny for cleaning his shoes, he tho… — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: A gentleman having given Dick a penny for cleaning his shoes, he thought he would buy a cat with it. Who acts: gentleman, penny, Dick. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Whittington and His Cat, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, Whittington and His Cat, sentence 31

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A gentleman having given Dick a penny for cleaning his shoes, he thought he would buy a cat with it.

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**Who acts:** gentleman, penny, Dick · **What happens:** have, give, clean, think, buy · **To what, where:** given Dick, shoes, cat · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Whittington and His Cat. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (gentleman, penny, Dick), 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:pg7439:37:31
# text = A gentleman having given Dick a penny for cleaning his shoes, he thought he would buy a cat with it.
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	gentleman	gentleman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
3	having	have	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	2	acl	_	_
4	given	give	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	5	amod	_	_
5	Dick	Dick	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	penny	penny	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
8	for	for	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
9	cleaning	clean	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	7	acl	_	_
10	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	shoes	shoe	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
13	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
14	thought	think	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
15	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
16	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	17	aux	_	_
17	buy	buy	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	ccomp	_	_
18	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	cat	cat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obj	_	_
20	with	with	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
21	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | gerund | a gentleman *not said here* | given Dick |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **give** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn break\_down-45.8 «NP V»: agent=Patient |
| 3 | **clean** | gerund | a penny *not said here* | Dick's shoes |  |  |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent shoe=Patient |
| 4 | **think** *speech: other* | past | a gentleman |  |  |  |  |  | vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Theme |
| 5 | **buy** | would | Dick | a cat |  |  |  | with cat | vn accept-77.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent cat=Theme |

<!-- .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.

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**Text:** «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7439 (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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