---
title: He could not marry a poor woman, and he did not wish for a rich one. — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He could not marry a poor woman, and he did not wish for a rich one. Who acts: son. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Spindle, Shuttle, and Needle, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, Spindle, Shuttle, and Needle, sentence 12

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He could not marry a poor woman, and he did not wish for a rich one.

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**Who acts:** son · **What happens:** not marry, not wish · **To what, where:** poor woman

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Spindle, Shuttle, and Needle. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (son), 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:pg7277:44:12
# text = He could not marry a poor woman, and he did not wish for a rich one.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	4	advmod	_	_
4	marry	marry	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	woman	woman	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
10	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
11	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
12	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	13	advmod	_	_
13	wish	wish	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	conj	_	_
14	for	for	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
15	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
16	rich	rich	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
17	one	one	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **marry** | could | son | a poor woman |  |  |  |  | vn amalgamate-22.2-3-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent woman=Patient |
| 2 | **not** **wish** | past · do-support | son |  |  |  |  | for a rich one | vn long-32.2 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Pivot for one=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 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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