---
title: However small you may be, you are better than nothing at all." — The Aesop for Children · tree and pragmatics
description: However small you may be, you are better than nothing at all." Who acts: you. A sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Fisherman and the Little Fish, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Aesop for Children, The Fisherman and the Little Fish, sentence 8

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However small you may be, you are better than nothing at all."

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

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This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Fisherman and the Little Fish. 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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**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:pg19994:148:8
# text = However small you may be, you are better than nothing at all."
1	However	however	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
2	small	small	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	obl	_	_
3	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
4	may	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
7	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
8	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
9	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	0	root	_	_
10	than	than	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	9	obl	_	_
12	at	at	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	11	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | infinitive |  |  |  |  |  | however, small *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** | present | you |  |  |  |  | than nothing; good *property* | 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:** «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, Project Gutenberg book 19994 (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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