---
title: They were all pretty, but Maria, the youngest, was the prettiest of… — The Crimson Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: They were all pretty, but Maria, the youngest, was the prettiest of the three. Who acts: people. A sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 38, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Crimson Fairy Book, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 38, sentence 35

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They were all pretty, but Maria, the youngest, was the prettiest of the three.

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**Who acts:** people · **What happens:** be

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This is a sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 38. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (people), 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:pg2435:38:35
# text = They were all pretty, but Maria, the youngest, was the prettiest of the three.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
2	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
3	all	all	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	pretty	pretty	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
6	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
7	Maria	Maria	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	youngest	young	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	7	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
12	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	prettiest	pretty	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	0	root	_	_
15	of	of	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	14	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | people |  |  |  |  | of the three; pretty *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:** «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 2435 (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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