---
title: Whitey was quite a clever little pig, but she was greedy. — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: Whitey was quite a clever little pig, but she was greedy. Who acts: Whitey. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Three Little Pigs, 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/pg7277/13/8/)

<!-- 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 Green Fairy Book](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/) / [The Three Little Pigs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/13/) / 8

# The Green Fairy Book, The Three Little Pigs, sentence 8

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Whitey was quite a clever little pig, but she was greedy.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Whitey · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** clever little pig

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Three Little Pigs. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Whitey), 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:pg7277:13:8
# text = Whitey was quite a clever little pig, but she was greedy.
1	Whitey	Whitey	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
3	quite	quite	DET	PDT	PronType=Ind	7	det:predet	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
5	clever	clever	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
6	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	pig	pig	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
9	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
10	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
11	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	12	cop	_	_
12	greedy	greedy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | Whitey | quite clever little pig |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** | past | Whitey |  |  |  |  | greedy *property* | 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 Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 7277 (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 7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/13/7/)
- next →: [sentence 9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/13/9/)
- ↑ back to [The Three Little Pigs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg7277/13/)