---
title: Now listen to the third and last: whoever brings the fairest wife ho… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Now listen to the third and last: whoever brings the fairest wife home with him shall be my heir.’ Who acts: you, whoever. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Biter Bit, part 5, 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/pg7277/30/12/)

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Biter Bit, part 5, sentence 12

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Now listen to the third and last: whoever brings the fairest wife home with him shall be my heir.’

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**Who acts:** you, whoever · **What happens:** listen, bring, be · **To what, where:** fairest wife, heir

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Biter Bit, part 5. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, whoever), 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:pg7277:30:12
# text = Now listen to the third and last: whoever brings the fairest wife home with him shall be my heir.’
1	Now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	2	advmod	_	_
2	listen	listen	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	third	third	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos|NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	2	obl	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	last	last	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	10	punct	_	_
9	whoever	whoever	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	10	nsubj	_	_
10	brings	bring	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	2	advcl	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	fairest	fair	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	13	amod	_	_
13	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
14	home	home	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
15	with	with	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	obl	_	_
17	shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	20	aux	_	_
18	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	20	cop	_	_
19	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	20	nmod:poss	_	_
20	heir	heir	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **listen** | imperative | you *not said here* |  |  |  | now | to the third | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent to third=Theme |
| 2 | **bring** | present | whoever |  | the fairest wife |  |  | with father; home *property* | vn bring-11.3-1 «NP V NP ADVP»: agent=Instrument wife=Destination |
| 3 | **is a** | shall |  | my heir |  |  |  |  | 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 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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