---
title: They were only less beautiful than the lady who seemed to be their m… — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: They were only less beautiful than the lady who seemed to be their mistress. Who acts: gestures, lady. A sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Circe's Palace., part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Tanglewood Tales, Circe's Palace., part 2, sentence 65

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They were only less beautiful than the lady who seemed to be their mistress.

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**Who acts:** gestures, lady · **What happens:** be, seem · **To what, where:** mistress

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This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Circe's Palace., 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 (gestures, lady), 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:pg976:16:65
# text = They were only less beautiful than the lady who seemed to be their mistress.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
2	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
3	only	only	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	less	less	ADV	RBR	Degree=Cmp	5	advmod	_	_
5	beautiful	beautiful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
6	than	than	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	lady	lady	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
9	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	10	nsubj	_	_
10	seemed	seem	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	acl:relcl	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	14	mark	_	_
12	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	cop	_	_
13	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	mistress	mistress	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | gestures *= gesture* |  |  |  |  | than the lady; beautiful, less *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **seem** | past | the lady |  |  |  |  |  | vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **is a** | to-infinitive | the lady *not said here* | gestures's mistress |  |  |  |  | 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:** «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Project Gutenberg book 976 (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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