---
title: ‘But the Nightingale is better than all,’ he saw written. — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘But the Nightingale is better than all,’ he saw written. Who acts: Nightingale. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nightingale, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg640/48/19/)

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Nightingale, sentence 19

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‘But the Nightingale is better than all,’ he saw written.

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**Who acts:** Nightingale · **What happens:** be, write · **To what, where:** gardener

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nightingale. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Nightingale), 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:pg640:48:19
# text = ‘But the Nightingale is better than all,’ he saw written.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	Nightingale	Nightingale	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
5	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
6	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	0	root	_	_
7	than	than	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	’	'	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
11	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
12	saw	see	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	aux:pass	_	_
13	written	write	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	6	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | the Nightingale |  |  |  |  | than all; good *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **write** | past · passive |  | gardener |  |  |  |  | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Theme |

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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 Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 640 (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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