---
title: Psalms 109:9 (JPS 1917) — Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. · tree and pragmatics
description: Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow. Who acts: you, children. Psalms 109:9 in JPS 1917 with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Psalms 109:9 · JPS 1917

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Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.

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**Who acts:** you, children · **What happens:** let, be · **To what, where:** children

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This is Psalms 109:9 · JPS 1917 in the English of the Jewish Publication Society's 1917 translation, from Mova's open Bible corpus. The page gives the sentence's syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies, parsed by Mova and checked by a teacher model — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, children), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it. The original of the verse links back to its own tree and to the Targum.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = jps:PSA:2023
# text = Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.
1	Let	let	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	3	nmod:poss	_	_
3	children	child	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	1	obj	_	_
4	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	cop	_	_
5	fatherless	fatherless	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	1	xcomp	_	_
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
8	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	9	nmod:poss	_	_
9	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	conj	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	widow	widow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	conj	_	_
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: command
- act: request
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: changed act=request

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **let** | imperative | you *not said here* | man's children |  |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent child=Theme |
| 2 | **is** | infinitive | man's children *not said here* |  |  |  |  | fatherless *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.

## The Hebrew of this verse {#hebrew}

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יִֽהְיוּ־בָנָ֥יו יְתוֹמִ֑ים וְ֝אִשְׁתּוֹ אַלְמָנָֽה׃

[Psalms 109:9: the Hebrew tree, its pragmatics and the Targum →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/ketuvim/PSA.109.9/)

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**Source.** The Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic Text, Jewish Publication Society, 1917, from eBible.org: public domain. Sentence `jps:PSA:2023` of Mova's parse database.

**The tree and the speech act** come from Mova's cycle: the small model's draft, read by a large model as teacher, passed by Mova's gates (Elamur Cosmic License). **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the chapter read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence of the chapter.

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