---
title: His brothers all promised fair, and what did they do?’ — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: His brothers all promised fair, and what did they do?’ Who acts: brothers, dates. 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 89

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His brothers all promised fair, and what did they do?’

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**Who acts:** brothers, dates · **What happens:** promise, do

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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 (brothers, dates), 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:pg641:29:89
# text = His brothers all promised fair, and what did they do?’
1	His	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	2	nmod:poss	_	_
2	brothers	brother	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
3	all	all	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	promised	promise	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	fair	fair	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
8	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	11	obj	_	_
9	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
10	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **promise** *speech: promise* | past | sultan's brothers |  |  |  |  | all, fair *property* | vn promise-37.13 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **do** | past · do-support | dates *= date* |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Eventuality |

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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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