---
title: The men were as dirty and ragged as gipsies, and there were besides… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: The men were as dirty and ragged as gipsies, and there were besides a quantity of old women and half-naked children. Who acts: men. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, A Tale of the Tontlawald, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, A Tale of the Tontlawald, sentence 3

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The men were as dirty and ragged as gipsies, and there were besides a quantity of old women and half-naked children.

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

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, A Tale of the Tontlawald. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (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:pg641:2:3
# text = The men were as dirty and ragged as gipsies, and there were besides a quantity of old women and half-naked children.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	men	man	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
3	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	as	as	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	dirty	dirty	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	ragged	ragged	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	conj	_	_
8	as	as	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	gipsies	gipsy	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
12	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	14	expl	_	_
13	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
14	besides	beside	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
15	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	quantity	quantity	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obj	_	_
17	of	of	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
18	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	amod	_	_
19	women	woman	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	nmod	_	_
20	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	24	cc	_	_
21	half	half	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing|NumForm=Word|NumType=Frac	23	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	21	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	naked	naked	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	24	amod	_	_
24	children	child	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	19	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | the men |  |  |  |  | dirty *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **be** |  | the men *not said here* |  |  |  |  | as gipsies | tree rules |
| 3 | **is** | past | the men *not said here* |  |  | there |  | beside *property* | 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 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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