---
title: ‘Oh, but what I have is so little,’ whimpered the old woman. — The Red Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Oh, but what I have is so little,’ whimpered the old woman. Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Master Thief, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/9/192/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The Red Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/) / [The Master Thief](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/9/) / 192

# The Red Fairy Book, The Master Thief, sentence 192

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
‘Oh, but what I have is so little,’ whimpered the old woman.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** have, be, whimper · **To what, where:** old woman

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Red Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Master Thief. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg540:9:192
# text = ‘Oh, but what I have is so little,’ whimpered the old woman.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Oh	oh	INTJ	UH	_	5	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
5	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	13	obj	_	_
6	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	have	have	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	acl:relcl	_	_
8	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
9	so	so	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
10	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	13	punct	_	_
13	whimpered	whimper	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
15	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | present | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is** | present |  |  |  |  |  | little *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **whimper** | past |  | the old woman |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 191](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/9/191/)
- next →: [sentence 193](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/9/193/)
- ↑ back to [The Master Thief](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg540/9/)