---
title: He had never tried to make his dinner off them, and they had always… — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He had never tried to make his dinner off them, and they had always been quite friendly. Who acts: panther, partridges. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 17, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 17, sentence 118

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He had never tried to make his dinner off them, and they had always been quite friendly.

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**Who acts:** panther, partridges · **What happens:** not try, make, be · **To what, where:** dinner

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This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, 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 (panther, partridges), 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:pg3027:17:118
# text = He had never tried to make his dinner off them, and they had always been quite friendly.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	tried	try	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	make	make	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	xcomp	_	_
7	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	dinner	dinner	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
9	off	off	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
13	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
14	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	18	aux	_	_
15	always	always	ADV	RB	PronType=Tot	18	advmod	_	_
16	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	18	cop	_	_
17	quite	quite	ADV	RB	_	18	advmod	_	_
18	friendly	friendly	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **try** | past · perfect | panther |  |  |  |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **make** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | panther *not said here* | panther's dinner |  |  |  | off partridges *= partridge* | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset dinner=Product |
| 3 | **is** | past · perfect | partridges *= partridge* |  |  |  |  | always, friendly *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 Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3027 (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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