“But, please, my lord,” said Mr. Noun, coming forward, “I suppose that Pronoun and I are not to lose a mark for every word of ours that is governed by a verb. That would be very hard.”
“No, no,” said the Judge. “There is no dishonour in being governed by an active verb; it is only when you allow yourselves to be governed by a little mite like Preposition, that you are to lose a mark.”
“Allow ourselves to be governed,” muttered Mr. Noun. “As if we could help it, when Dr. Syntax has once made the rule.”
“Brother Parsing,” said the Judge, “let us have a sentence to ‘parse,’ as you call it, that we may see clearly how it is done.”
“Certainly, my lord,” said Serjeant Parsing, turning over his papers. “Here is an excellent sentence, or rather, I should say, two sentences, for there are two verbs: ‘Jack suddenly gave a loud cry, for lo! a tiger appeared before him.’ Now let each Part-of-Speech claim the word as I read it. Jack.”
“Mine,” said Mr. Noun. “Jack is a proper noun.”
“Suddenly,” said Serjeant Parsing.
“Certainly suddenly is mine,” said Adverb, smoothly.
“Gave,” said Serjeant Parsing.
“Gave is mine,” said Dr. Verb, “and it agrees with its nominative, Jack. For ‘who gave?’ Jack gave, so Jack is the nominative; and please, Mr. Noun, what number and person is Jack, for gave must be the same?”