---
title: His wife, on the other hand, was always tender and pitiful to the po… — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: His wife, on the other hand, was always tender and pitiful to the poor and miserable. Who acts: wife. 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 4

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His wife, on the other hand, was always tender and pitiful to the poor and miserable.

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**Who acts:** wife · **What happens:** be

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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 (wife), 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:pg540:42:4
# text = His wife, on the other hand, was always tender and pitiful to the poor and miserable.
1	His	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	2	nmod:poss	_	_
2	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
4	on	on	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	other	other	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	hand	hand	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
9	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
10	always	always	ADV	RB	PronType=Tot	11	advmod	_	_
11	tender	tender	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
13	pitiful	pitiful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	conj	_	_
14	to	to	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	obl	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
18	miserable	miserable	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | Burchard's wife and the other hand |  |  |  |  | to the poor; always, tender *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **be** |  | Burchard's wife and the other hand *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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