---
title: But whatever they did, the result was always the same. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But whatever they did, the result was always the same. Who acts: sons, result. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nunda, Eater of People, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Nunda, Eater of People, sentence 70

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But whatever they did, the result was always the same.

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**Who acts:** sons, result · **What happens:** do, be · **To what, where:** whatever

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Nunda, Eater of People. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (sons, result), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg641:2547`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg641:29:70
# text = But whatever they did, the result was always the same.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
2	whatever	whatever	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	4	obj	_	_
3	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	did	do	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	advcl	_	_
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	result	result	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
8	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
9	always	always	ADV	RB	PronType=Tot	11	advmod	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	same	same	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **do** | past | sons *= son* | whatever |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent whatever=Eventuality |
| 2 | **is** | past | the result |  |  |  |  | always, same *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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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