---
title: Would you prefer the eldest, or the youngest, or the middle one?” — Folk tales from Tibet · tree and pragmatics
description: Would you prefer the eldest, or the youngest, or the middle one?” Who acts: you. A sentence of «Folk tales from Tibet» by William Frederick Travers, Sir O'Connor, The Story of the Boy With the Deformed Head., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Folk tales from Tibet, The Story of the Boy With the Deformed Head., sentence 33

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Would you prefer the eldest, or the youngest, or the middle one?”

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** prefer · **To what, where:** eldest

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This is a sentence of «Folk tales from Tibet» by William Frederick Travers, Sir O'Connor, The Story of the Boy With the Deformed Head.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you), 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:pg75000:16:33
# text = Would you prefer the eldest, or the youngest, or the middle one?”
1	Would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
2	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	prefer	prefer	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	eldest	eld	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
7	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	youngest	young	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
11	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	middle	middle	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	one	one	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **prefer** | would | you | the eldest |  |  |  |  | vn admire-31.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer eld=Stimulus |

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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:** «Folk tales from Tibet» by William Frederick Travers, Sir O'Connor, Project Gutenberg book 75000 (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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