---
title: My mother is dead, my father absent. — Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains · tree and pragmatics
description: My mother is dead, my father absent. Who acts: mother, father. A sentence of «Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains» by Toofie Lauder, A Historical Tale., part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains, A Historical Tale., part 2, sentence 55

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My mother is dead, my father absent.

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**Who acts:** mother, father · **What happens:** be

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This is a sentence of «Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains» by Toofie Lauder, A Historical Tale., part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (mother, father), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg74323:19:55
# text = My mother is dead, my father absent.
1	My	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	2	nmod:poss	_	_
2	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	dead	dead	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
6	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	father	father	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
8	absent	absent	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | My mother |  |  |  |  | dead *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **be** |  | my father |  |  |  |  |  | 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:** «Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains» by Toofie Lauder, Project Gutenberg book 74323 (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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