---
title: The captain wondered at this, and asked if these vermin were not unp… — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The captain wondered at this, and asked if these vermin were not unpleasant. Who acts: captain, vermin. 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 60

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The captain wondered at this, and asked if these vermin were not unpleasant.

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**Who acts:** captain, vermin · **What happens:** wonder, ask, not be · **To what, where:** this

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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 (captain, vermin), 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:pg7439:37:60
# text = The captain wondered at this, and asked if these vermin were not unpleasant.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	captain	captain	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	wondered	wonder	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	at	at	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
9	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	14	mark	_	_
10	these	this	DET	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	11	det	_	_
11	vermin	vermin	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	nsubj	_	_
12	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
13	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	14	advmod	_	_
14	unpleasant	unpleasant	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wonder** *speech: ask* | past | the captain |  |  | this |  |  | vn care-88.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **not** **is** *a condition, not said to happen* | past | this vermin |  |  |  |  | unpleasant *property* | 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:** «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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