---
title: Who would give three straws for such a miserable little thing? — The Lilac Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Who would give three straws for such a miserable little thing? A sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 24, 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/pg3454/24/114/)

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# The Lilac Fairy Book, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 24, sentence 114

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Who would give three straws for such a miserable little thing?

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**What happens:** give · **To what, where:** three straws

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This is a sentence of «The Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Lilac Fairy Book, part 24. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg3454:24:114
# text = Who would give three straws for such a miserable little thing?
1	Who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	3	nsubj	_	_
2	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	give	give	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
4	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	5	nummod	_	_
5	straws	straw	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obj	_	_
6	for	for	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
7	such	such	DET	PDT	PronType=Ind	11	det:predet	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
9	miserable	miserable	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
10	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **give** | would |  | three straws |  |  |  | for such miserable little thing | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP PP.asset»: agent=Agent straw=Theme for thing=Asset |

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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 Lilac Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 3454 (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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