---
title: One was blind, the second lame, and the third had her ears cropped. — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: One was blind, the second lame, and the third had her ears cropped. Who acts: One, third, ears. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Bronze Ring, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/2/187/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Blue Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/) / [The Bronze Ring](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/2/) / 187

# The Blue Fairy Book, The Bronze Ring, sentence 187

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
One was blind, the second lame, and the third had her ears cropped.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** One, third, ears · **What happens:** be, have, crop

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Bronze Ring. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (One, third, ears), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg503:2:187
# text = One was blind, the second lame, and the third had her ears cropped.
1	One	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	3	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	cop	_	_
3	blind	blind	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	second	second	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos|NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	7	amod	_	_
7	lame	lame	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	third	third	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
12	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	parataxis	_	_
13	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	ears	ear	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	nsubj	_	_
15	cropped	crop	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | One |  |  |  |  | the second lame *obl*; blind *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **have** | past | the third |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **crop** | past | third's ears |  |  |  |  |  | vn carve-21.2-2 «NP V ADVP-Middle»: agent=Patient |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 186](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/2/186/)
- next →: [sentence 188](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/2/188/)
- ↑ back to [The Bronze Ring](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/2/)