---
title: These stories are as old as anything that men have invented. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: These stories are as old as anything that men have invented. Who acts: stories, men. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Violet Fairy Book, 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/pg641/1/9/)

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Violet Fairy Book, sentence 9

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These stories are as old as anything that men have invented.

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**Who acts:** stories, men · **What happens:** be, invent

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Violet Fairy Book. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (stories, men), 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:pg641:1:9
# text = These stories are as old as anything that men have invented.
1	These	this	DET	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	2	det	_	_
2	stories	story	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
3	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	as	as	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
6	as	as	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	anything	anything	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	5	obl	_	_
8	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	11	obj	_	_
9	men	man	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	nsubj	_	_
10	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	invented	invent	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	7	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | this stories |  |  |  |  | as anything; old *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **invent** | present · perfect | men |  |  |  |  |  | vn create-26.4-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent that=Result |

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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 Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 641 (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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