---
title: The African magician had a younger brother, who was, if possible, mo… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The African magician had a younger brother, who was, if possible, more wicked and more cunning than himself. Who acts: African magician, younger brother. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, sentence 237

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The African magician had a younger brother, who was, if possible, more wicked and more cunning than himself.

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**Who acts:** African magician, younger brother · **What happens:** have, be · **To what, where:** younger brother

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (African magician, younger brother), 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:pg503:12:237
# text = The African magician had a younger brother, who was, if possible, more wicked and more cunning than himself.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	African	African	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	magician	magician	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	younger	young	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	7	amod	_	_
7	brother	brother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
9	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	13	nsubj	_	_
10	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
12	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
13	possible	possible	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
15	more	more	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	16	advmod	_	_
16	wicked	wicked	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	conj	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	_
18	more	more	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	19	advmod	_	_
19	cunning	cunning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	conj	_	_
20	than	than	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
21	himself	himself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	16	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | the African magician | a younger brother |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent brother=Patient |
| 2 | **is** *a condition, not said to happen* | past | a younger brother |  |  |  |  | possible *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 Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 503 (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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