---
title: ‘Poor little creature!’ said the field-mouse, for she was a kind-hea… — The Yellow Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Poor little creature!’ said the field-mouse, for she was a kind-hearted old thing at the bottom. Who acts: Poor little creature, creature. A sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Witch in the Stone Boat(31), with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Yellow Fairy Book, The Witch in the Stone Boat(31), sentence 137

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‘Poor little creature!’ said the field-mouse, for she was a kind-hearted old thing at the bottom.

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**Who acts:** Poor little creature, creature · **What happens:** say, be · **To what, where:** field mouse, bottom · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Witch in the Stone Boat(31). The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Poor little creature, creature), 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:pg640:47:137
# text = ‘Poor little creature!’ said the field-mouse, for she was a kind-hearted old thing at the bottom.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
3	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	creature	creature	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	’	'	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
7	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
9	field	field	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	mouse	mouse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
13	for	for	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
14	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	21	nsubj	_	_
15	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	21	cop	_	_
16	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
17	kind	kind	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	17	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	hearted	hearted	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	amod	_	_
20	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	amod	_	_
21	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	ccomp	_	_
22	at	at	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
23	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	24	det	_	_
24	bottom	bottom	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	21	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Poor little creature | the field mouse |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent mouse=Topic |
| 2 | **is** | past | creature |  |  | the bottom |  | for a hearted old thing | 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.

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**Text:** «The Yellow Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 640 (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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