---
title: The eldest had the mill, the second the ass, and the youngest nothin… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The eldest had the mill, the second the ass, and the youngest nothing but the cat. Who acts: eldest. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Master Cat; Or, Puss in Boots, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, The Master Cat; Or, Puss in Boots, sentence 5

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The eldest had the mill, the second the ass, and the youngest nothing but the cat.

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**Who acts:** eldest · **What happens:** have · **To what, where:** mill

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Master Cat; Or, Puss in Boots. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (eldest), 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:pg503:21:5
# text = The eldest had the mill, the second the ass, and the youngest nothing but the cat.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	eldest	eld	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	3	nsubj	_	_
3	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	mill	mill	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	second	second	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos|NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	10	amod	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	ass	ass	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	youngest	young	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	15	amod	_	_
15	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	3	parataxis	_	_
16	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	cat	cat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | the eldest | the mill and the second ass |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent mill=Patient |

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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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