---
title: They are older than reading and writing, and arose like wild flowers… — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: They are older than reading and writing, and arose like wild flowers before men had any education to quarrel over. Who acts: alphabets, men, education. A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 1, sentence 33

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They are older than reading and writing, and arose like wild flowers before men had any education to quarrel over.

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**Who acts:** alphabets, men, education · **What happens:** be, arise, have, quarrel over · **To what, where:** education

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (alphabets, men, education), 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:pg3454:1:33
# text = They are older than reading and writing, and arose like wild flowers before men had any education to quarrel over.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	cop	_	_
3	older	old	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	0	root	_	_
4	than	than	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	reading	reading	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	writing	writing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	arose	arise	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
11	like	like	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	wild	wild	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	flowers	flower	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obl	_	_
14	before	before	SCONJ	IN	_	16	mark	_	_
15	men	man	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	nsubj	_	_
16	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	advcl	_	_
17	any	any	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	18	det	_	_
18	education	education	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obj	_	_
19	to	to	PART	TO	_	20	mark	_	_
20	quarrel	quarrel	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	16	xcomp	_	_
21	over	over	ADP	RP	_	20	compound:prt	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | alphabets *= alphabet* |  |  |  |  | than reading and writing; old *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **arise** | past | alphabets *= alphabet* *not said here* |  |  |  |  | like wild flowers | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **have** | past | men | any education |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 4 | **quarrel over** | to-infinitive | any education *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn battle-36.4 «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 Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3454 (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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