---
title: He was a brave little fellow, but he had lost neither arms nor legs… — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He was a brave little fellow, but he had lost neither arms nor legs in battle. Who acts: soldier. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Little Soldier, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Little Soldier, sentence 3

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He was a brave little fellow, but he had lost neither arms nor legs in battle.

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**Who acts:** soldier · **What happens:** be, lose · **To what, where:** brave little fellow, arms, battle

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Little Soldier. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (soldier), 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:pg7277:22:3
# text = He was a brave little fellow, but he had lost neither arms nor legs in battle.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
4	brave	brave	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
5	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	fellow	fellow	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
9	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
10	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	lost	lose	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	6	conj	_	_
12	neither	neither	CCONJ	CC	Polarity=Neg	13	cc:preconj	_	_
13	arms	arm	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	obj	_	_
14	nor	nor	CCONJ	CC	Polarity=Neg	15	cc	_	_
15	legs	leg	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	conj	_	_
16	in	in	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	battle	battle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | soldier | a brave little fellow |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **lose** | past · perfect | soldier | arms nor legs |  | battle |  |  | vn succeed-74-3-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent arm=Eventuality |

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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 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.

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