---
title: ‘That’s a nice little fellow; I should like to keep him. — The Violet Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘That’s a nice little fellow; I should like to keep him. Who acts: That, I. A sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Three Wonderful Beggars, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Violet Fairy Book, The Story of Three Wonderful Beggars, sentence 34

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‘That’s a nice little fellow; I should like to keep him.

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**Who acts:** That, I · **What happens:** be, like, keep · **To what, where:** nice little fellow, Mark

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This is a sentence of «The Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Story of Three Wonderful Beggars. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (That, I), 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:pg641:4:34
# text = ‘That’s a nice little fellow; I should like to keep him.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	That	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	7	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	’s	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
5	nice	nice	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
6	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	fellow	fellow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	11	punct	_	_
9	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
10	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	like	like	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	acl:relcl	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
13	keep	keep	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	xcomp	_	_
14	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | That | a nice little fellow |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **like** | should | I | a nice little fellow *not said here* |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **keep** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | I *not said here* | Mark |  |  |  |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=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 Violet Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 641 (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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