---
title: Their mother detested her eldest son, and had only eyes for the youn… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Their mother detested her eldest son, and had only eyes for the youngest. Who acts: mother. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Ring, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Enchanted Ring, sentence 2

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Their mother detested her eldest son, and had only eyes for the youngest.

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**Who acts:** mother · **What happens:** detest, have · **To what, where:** eldest son, eyes

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Enchanted Ring. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (mother), 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:pg7277:19:2
# text = Their mother detested her eldest son, and had only eyes for the youngest.
1	Their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	2	nmod:poss	_	_
2	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	detested	detest	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	6	nmod:poss	_	_
5	eldest	eld	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	6	amod	_	_
6	son	son	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
10	only	only	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
11	eyes	eye	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obj	_	_
12	for	for	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	youngest	young	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **detest** | past | Their mother | mother's eldest son |  |  |  |  | vn admire-31.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer son=Stimulus |
| 2 | **have** | past | Their mother *not said here* | eyes |  |  |  | for the youngest | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent eye=Patient |

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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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