---
title: But, do what they would, they were nothing by comparison with the Pr… — The Blue Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But, do what they would, they were nothing by comparison with the Prince’s. Who acts: ladies. A sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Prince Hyacinth and the Dear Little Princess, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Blue Fairy Book, Prince Hyacinth and the Dear Little Princess, sentence 24

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
But, do what they would, they were nothing by comparison with the Prince’s.

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**Who acts:** ladies · **What happens:** do, be · **To what, where:** nothing

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This is a sentence of «The Blue Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Prince Hyacinth and the Dear Little Princess. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (ladies), 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:pg503:3:24
# text = But, do what they would, they were nothing by comparison with the Prince’s.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
3	do	do	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	3	obj	_	_
5	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
9	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
10	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	3	conj	_	_
11	by	by	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	comparison	comparison	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	_
13	with	with	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	Prince	Prince	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	’s	's	PART	POS	_	15	case	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **do** | present |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Eventuality |
| 2 | **is a** | past | ladies *= lady* | nothing |  |  |  | by comparison with the Prince | tree rules |

<!-- .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.

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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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