---
title: His mother had often given him nice things, but nothing had ever see… — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: His mother had often given him nice things, but nothing had ever seemed so good as this. Who acts: nothing. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The History of Dwarf Long Nose, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The History of Dwarf Long Nose, part 1, sentence 72

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His mother had often given him nice things, but nothing had ever seemed so good as this.

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**Who acts:** nothing · **What happens:** give, seem · **To what, where:** mother, boy

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The History of Dwarf Long Nose, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (nothing), 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:pg641:26:72
# text = His mother had often given him nice things, but nothing had ever seemed so good as this.
1	His	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	2	nmod:poss	_	_
2	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj:pass	_	_
3	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	often	often	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	given	give	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
6	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	iobj	_	_
7	nice	nice	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	things	thing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
10	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
11	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	14	nsubj	_	_
12	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
13	ever	ever	ADV	RB	PronType=Ind	14	advmod	_	_
14	seemed	seem	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	conj	_	_
15	so	so	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	_
16	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	xcomp	_	_
17	as	as	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	16	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **give** | past · perfect · passive |  | boy's mother | boy |  |  | often *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **seem** | past | nothing |  |  |  | ever | good *property* | vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Theme |

<!-- .note -->
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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