---
title: He was the best of footmen and the best of knights. — Celtic Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: He was the best of footmen and the best of knights. Who acts: Kynthelig. A sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Wooing of Olwen, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Celtic Fairy Tales, The Wooing of Olwen, sentence 36

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He was the best of footmen and the best of knights.

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**Who acts:** Kynthelig · **What happens:** be

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This is a sentence of «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, The Wooing of Olwen. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Kynthelig), 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:pg7885:17:36
# text = He was the best of footmen and the best of knights.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	best	good	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	0	root	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	footmen	footman	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obl	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	best	good	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	4	conj	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	knights	knight	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | Kynthelig |  |  |  |  | good *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **be** |  | Kynthelig *not said here* |  |  |  |  | of footmen; of knights | 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:** «Celtic Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7885 (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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