---
title: 'What harm can a poor boy like me do a great Troll like you?' answer… — The Orange Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: 'What harm can a poor boy like me do a great Troll like you?' answered Pinkel. ' Who acts: harm, me, poor boy. A sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 16, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg3027/16/53/)

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# The Orange Fairy Book, Opening, part 16, sentence 53

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'What harm can a poor boy like me do a great Troll like you?' answered Pinkel. '

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**Who acts:** harm, me, poor boy · **What happens:** boy, do, answer · **To what, where:** great Troll, Pinkel

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This is a sentence of «The Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 16. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (harm, me, poor boy), 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:pg3027:16:53
# text = 'What harm can a poor boy like me do a great Troll like you?' answered Pinkel. '
1	'	'	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	What	what	DET	WDT	PronType=Int	3	det	_	_
3	harm	harm	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
4	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nsubj	_	_
8	like	like	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
9	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	do	do	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	advcl	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	Troll	troll	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
14	like	like	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	7	punct	_	_
18	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
19	Pinkel	Pinkel	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	18	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	18	punct	_	_
21	'	'	PUNCT	''	_	18	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **boy** | can | what harm |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **do** | present | me | a great Troll |  |  |  | like you | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent troll=Eventuality |
| 3 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | a poor boy |  | Pinkel |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent pinkel=Eventuality |

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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 Orange Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3027 (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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