---
title: An ugly company they were, with lips more or less disfigured, like o… — More English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: An ugly company they were, with lips more or less disfigured, like old Habetrot's. Who acts: spinsters. A sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 17, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg14241/31/18/)

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# More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 17, sentence 18

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An ugly company they were, with lips more or less disfigured, like old Habetrot's.

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**Who acts:** spinsters · **What happens:** be, disfigure · **To what, where:** lips

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This is a sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 17. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (spinsters), 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:pg14241:31:18
# text = An ugly company they were, with lips more or less disfigured, like old Habetrot's.
1	An	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	ugly	ugly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	company	company	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
4	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
5	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	with	with	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	lips	lip	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nmod	_	_
9	more	more	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	12	advmod	_	_
10	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
11	less	less	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	12	advmod	_	_
12	disfigured	disfigure	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	8	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
14	like	like	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	Habetrot	Habetrot	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	obl:agent	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	's	's	PART	POS	_	16	case	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | spinsters *= spinster* |  |  |  |  | with lips | tree rules |
| 2 | **disfigure** | participle |  | lips *not said here* |  |  |  | less *property* | vn destroy-44 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |

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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:** «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 14241 (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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