---
title: ‘Things are never as bad as they look. — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: ‘Things are never as bad as they look. Who acts: Things, grave. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Biter Bit, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Biter Bit, part 2, sentence 49

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‘Things are never as bad as they look.

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**Who acts:** Things, grave · **What happens:** not be, look

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Biter Bit, 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 (Things, grave), 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:pg7277:27:49
# text = ‘Things are never as bad as they look.
1	‘	'	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Things	thing	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nsubj	_	_
3	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
4	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	6	advmod	_	_
5	as	as	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	bad	bad	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
7	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	9	mark	_	_
8	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	look	look	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **is** | present | Things |  |  |  |  | bad *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **look** | present | grave |  |  |  |  |  | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |

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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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