---
title: Matters got worse and worse till, one morning, the eldest boy said t… — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Matters got worse and worse till, one morning, the eldest boy said to the twins: Who acts: Matters, worse till. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 32, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 32, sentence 106

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Matters got worse and worse till, one morning, the eldest boy said to the twins:

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**Who acts:** Matters, worse till · **What happens:** get, say · **To what, where:** twins · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 32. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Matters, worse till), 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:pg3027:32:106
# text = Matters got worse and worse till, one morning, the eldest boy said to the twins:
1	Matters	matter	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	nsubj	_	_
2	got	get	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	worse	bad	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	2	xcomp	_	_
4	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
5	worse	bad	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	6	amod	_	_
6	till	till	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
8	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	9	nummod	_	_
9	morning	morning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	eldest	eld	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	13	amod	_	_
13	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
14	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
15	to	to	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
16	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	twins	twin	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **get** | past | Matters |  |  |  |  | bad *property* | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Experiencer |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | worse till and one morning |  | the twins |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V PP.recipient S-Quote»: agent=Agent to twin=Recipient |

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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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