---
title: But they were mistaken. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: But they were mistaken. Who acts: fingers. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Mogarzea and His Son, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, Mogarzea and His Son, sentence 61

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But they were mistaken.

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

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Mogarzea and His Son. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (fingers), 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:pg641:44:61
# text = But they were mistaken.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	mistaken	mistaken	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | fingers *= finger* |  |  |  |  | mistaken *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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