---
title: It’s a pretty little revenge to keep them like that.’ — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: It’s a pretty little revenge to keep them like that.’ Who acts: end. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Branch, part 2, 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/pg540/35/97/)

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# The Red Fairy Book, The Golden Branch, part 2, sentence 97

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It’s a pretty little revenge to keep them like that.’

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**Who acts:** end · **What happens:** be, keep · **To what, where:** little revenge, creatures

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This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Branch, 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 (end), 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:pg540:35:97
# text = It’s a pretty little revenge to keep them like that.’
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	’s	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
4	pretty	pretty	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	revenge	revenge	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	keep	keep	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	acl	_	_
9	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	obj	_	_
10	like	like	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	’	'	SYM	NFP	_	6	discourse	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | end | a little revenge |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **keep** | to-infinitive |  | creatures *= creature* |  |  |  | like a little revenge | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Theme |

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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 Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 540 (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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