---
title: He seemed in a desperate condition, but he got neither better nor wo… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He seemed in a desperate condition, but he got neither better nor worse. Who acts: death. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nettle Spinner, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Nettle Spinner, sentence 140

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He seemed in a desperate condition, but he got neither better nor worse.

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**Who acts:** death · **What happens:** seem, get

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nettle Spinner. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (death), 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:pg540:42:140
# text = He seemed in a desperate condition, but he got neither better nor worse.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	seemed	seem	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	in	in	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	desperate	desperate	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	condition	condition	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
9	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	got	get	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
11	neither	neither	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
12	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	10	xcomp	_	_
13	nor	nor	CCONJ	CC	Polarity=Neg	14	cc	_	_
14	worse	bad	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	12	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **seem** | past | death |  |  |  |  | in a desperate condition | vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Theme in condition=Attribute |
| 2 | **get** | past | death |  |  |  |  | good, neither *property* | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Experiencer |

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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 Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 540 (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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