---
title: He’s only a bear-keeper, and as poor as any church mouse.’ — The Green Fairy Book · tree and pragmatics
description: He’s only a bear-keeper, and as poor as any church mouse.’ Who acts: brother. A sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Lads, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Green Fairy Book, The Golden Lads, sentence 56

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He’s only a bear-keeper, and as poor as any church mouse.’

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**Who acts:** brother · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** bear keeper

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This is a sentence of «The Green Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Golden Lads. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (brother), 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:pg7277:49:56
# text = He’s only a bear-keeper, and as poor as any church mouse.’
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	’s	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
3	only	only	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
5	bear	bear	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	keeper	keeper	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	as	as	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
11	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	conj	_	_
12	as	as	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
13	any	any	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	15	det	_	_
14	church	church	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	compound	_	_
15	mouse	mouse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	’	'	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 | brother | a bear keeper |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **be** |  | brother *not said here* |  |  |  |  | as any church mouse | 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.

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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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