---
title: In this way these tales are older than reading and writing, far olde… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: In this way these tales are older than reading and writing, far older than printing. Who acts: tales. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Green Fairy Book, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/1/12/)

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Green Fairy Book, sentence 12

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In this way these tales are older than reading and writing, far older than printing.

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**Who acts:** tales · **What happens:** be, print · **To what, where:** way

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Green Fairy Book. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (tales), 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:pg7277:1:12
# text = In this way these tales are older than reading and writing, far older than printing.
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	3	det	_	_
3	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
4	these	this	DET	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	5	det	_	_
5	tales	tale	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	_
6	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
7	older	old	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	0	root	_	_
8	than	than	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	reading	reading	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	writing	writing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
13	far	far	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	14	advmod	_	_
14	older	old	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	7	conj	_	_
15	than	than	SCONJ	IN	_	16	mark	_	_
16	printing	print	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	14	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | this tales |  |  | this way |  | than reading and writing; old *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **be** |  | this tales *not said here* |  |  |  |  | far *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **print** | gerund | this tales *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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 Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 7277 (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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