---
title: ‘He deserves nothing better,’ answered the beggar, ‘for it was an il… — The Pink Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘He deserves nothing better,’ answered the beggar, ‘for it was an ill deed. Who acts: man, beggar. A sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, 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/pg5615/2/14/)

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# The Pink Fairy Book, The Pink Fairy Book, part 2, sentence 14

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‘He deserves nothing better,’ answered the beggar, ‘for it was an ill deed.

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**Who acts:** man, beggar · **What happens:** deserve, answer, be · **To what, where:** nothing, ill deed · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Pink Fairy Book, 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 (man, beggar), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg5615:93`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg5615:2:14
# text = ‘He deserves nothing better,’ answered the beggar, ‘for it was an ill deed.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	_
2	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	deserves	deserve	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	ccomp	_	_
4	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	3	obj	_	_
5	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	4	amod	_	_
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
7	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
8	answered	answer	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	beggar	beggar	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
12	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	18	punct	_	_
13	for	for	SCONJ	IN	_	18	mark	_	_
14	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
15	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	18	cop	_	_
16	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
17	ill	ill	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	_
18	deed	deed	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	advcl	_	_
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **deserve** | present | man | nothing |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **answer** *speech: assert* | past | the beggar |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **is a** | past | beggar | a ill deed |  |  |  |  | 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 Pink Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 5615 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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