---
title: With all their evil designs against him, they pretended to be their… — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: With all their evil designs against him, they pretended to be their cousin's best friends, and expressed great joy at making his acquaintance. Who acts: nephews, best friends, Theseus. A sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Minotaur., part 1, with its dependency tree and the pr
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/3/97/)

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# Tanglewood Tales, The Minotaur., part 1, sentence 97

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With all their evil designs against him, they pretended to be their cousin's best friends, and expressed great joy at making his acquaintance.

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**Who acts:** nephews, best friends, Theseus · **What happens:** pretend, be, express, make, design, acquaint · **To what, where:** great joy, acquaintance

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This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Minotaur., part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (nephews, best friends, Theseus), 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:pg976:3:97
# text = With all their evil designs against him, they pretended to be their cousin's best friends, and expressed great joy at making his acquaintance.
1	With	with	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
2	all	all	DET	PDT	PronType=Tot	5	det:predet	_	_
3	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
4	evil	evil	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	designs	design	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obl	_	_
6	against	against	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
9	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	pretended	pretend	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
12	be	be	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	xcomp	_	_
13	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	cousin	cousin	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	's	's	PART	POS	_	14	case	_	_
16	best	good	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	17	amod	_	_
17	friends	friend	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
19	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	20	cc	_	_
20	expressed	express	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	conj	_	_
21	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	22	amod	_	_
22	joy	joy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	obj	_	_
23	at	at	SCONJ	IN	_	24	mark	_	_
24	making	make	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	20	advcl	_	_
25	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	26	nmod:poss	_	_
26	acquaintance	acquaintance	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	24	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
27	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pretend** | past | nephews *= nephew* |  |  |  |  | with nephews's evil designs against Theseus | tree rules |
| 2 | **be** | to-infinitive | nephews's cousin's best friends |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **express** | past | nephews *= nephew* *not said here* | great joy |  |  |  |  | vn reflexive\_appearance-48.1.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent joy=Theme |
| 4 | **make** | gerund | nephews *= nephew* *not said here* | Theseus's acquaintance |  |  |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset acquaintance=Product |
| 5 | **design** |  | nephews *= nephew* |  |  |  |  | against Theseus | nom design «act transitive»: poss=agent against=obl |
| 6 | **acquaint** |  | Theseus |  |  |  |  |  | nom acquaintance «cognition transitive»: poss=agent |

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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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