---
title: But if perchance an offspring prove but weak, Him they revile, laugh… — The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault · tree and pragmatics
description: But if perchance an offspring prove but weak, Him they revile, laugh at, defraud and cheat. Who acts: perchance, parents. A sentence of «The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault» by Charles Perrault, Upon Earth"], 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/pg29021/14/167/)

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# The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault, Upon Earth"\], sentence 167

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But if perchance an offspring prove but weak, Him they revile, laugh at, defraud and cheat.

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**Who acts:** perchance, parents · **What happens:** prove, revile, laugh · **To what, where:** offspring, defraud

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This is a sentence of «The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault» by Charles Perrault, Upon Earth"\]. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (perchance, parents), 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:pg29021:14:167
# text = But if perchance an offspring prove but weak, Him they revile, laugh at, defraud and cheat.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
2	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	3	mark	_	_
3	perchance	perchance	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
4	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	offspring	offspring	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
6	prove	prove	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
7	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	weak	weak	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
10	Him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	obl	_	_
11	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	revile	revile	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
14	laugh	laugh	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	conj	_	_
15	at	at	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
17	defraud	defraud	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	_
18	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
19	cheat	cheat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **prove** | infinitive | perchance |  |  |  |  |  | vn declare-29.4-1-1 «NP V what S\_INF»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **revile** | present | parents *= parent* | offspring |  |  |  |  | vn judgment-33.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **laugh** | present | parents *= parent* *not said here* |  |  | defraud and cheat |  |  | vn nonverbal\_expression-40.2 «NP V»: 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:** «The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault» by Charles Perrault, Project Gutenberg book 29021 (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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