---
title: _Better an enemy. — The grateful elephant · tree and pragmatics
description: _Better an enemy. A sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 13, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The grateful elephant, Opening, part 13, sentence 42

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\_Better an enemy.

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This is a sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 13. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg74064:13:46
# text = _Better an enemy.
1	_	_	PUNCT	NFP	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	0	root	_	_
3	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	enemy	enemy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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The frames reader finds no event or fact in this sentence.

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**Text:** «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Project Gutenberg book 74064 (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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