---
title: Now the Dreadful Women were akin to the Three Gray Sisters, and it w… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Now the Dreadful Women were akin to the Three Gray Sisters, and it was hard for them to tell the boy the way. Who acts: Dreadful Women. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Terrible Head, 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/pg503/27/65/)

<!-- 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 Terrible Head](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/27/) / 65

# The Blue Fairy Book, The Terrible Head, sentence 65

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Now the Dreadful Women were akin to the Three Gray Sisters, and it was hard for them to tell the boy the way.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Dreadful Women · **What happens:** be, tell · **To what, where:** way, boy · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Terrible Head. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Dreadful Women), 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:pg503:27:65
# text = Now the Dreadful Women were akin to the Three Gray Sisters, and it was hard for them to tell the boy the way.
1	Now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	6	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	Dreadful	dreadful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	Women	woman	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nsubj	_	_
5	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
6	akin	akin	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
7	to	to	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
9	Three	Three	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	compound	_	_
10	Gray	Gray	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	amod	_	_
11	Sisters	Sister	PROPN	NNPS	Number=Plur	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
14	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	expl	_	_
15	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	16	cop	_	_
16	hard	hard	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	conj	_	_
17	for	for	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	obl	_	_
19	to	to	PART	TO	_	20	mark	_	_
20	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	16	csubj	_	_
21	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
22	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	obj	_	_
23	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	24	det	_	_
24	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | the Dreadful Women |  |  |  | now | to the Three Gray Sisters; akin *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** | past | the Dreadful Women *not said here* |  |  |  |  | for women *= woman*; hard *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **tell** *speech: assert* | to-infinitive |  | the way | the boy |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent boy=Recipient way=Topic |

<!-- .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 64](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/27/64/)
- next →: [sentence 66](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/27/66/)
- ↑ back to [The Terrible Head](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg503/27/)