---
title: Better an enemy with sense Than a friend without it, For with the wo… — The grateful elephant · tree and pragmatics
description: Better an enemy with sense Than a friend without it, For with the words, “I’ll kill a mosquito!” Who acts: Buddha. 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 73

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Better an enemy with sense Than a friend without it, For with the words, “I’ll kill a mosquito!”

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**Who acts:** Buddha · **What happens:** kill · **To what, where:** mosquito, Better 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: who acts (Buddha), 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:pg74064:13:77
# text = Better an enemy with sense Than a friend without it, For with the words, “I’ll kill a mosquito!”
1	Better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	3	amod	_	_
2	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	enemy	enemy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
4	with	with	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	sense	sense	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	_
6	Than	than	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	friend	friend	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	_
9	without	without	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
10	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
12	For	for	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
13	with	with	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	words	word	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
17	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	20	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	20	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	’ll	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	20	aux	_	_
20	kill	kill	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	parataxis	_	_
21	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
22	mosquito	mosquito	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	20	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	20	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **kill** *in a quote* | future | Buddha | a mosquito |  |  |  |  | vn remove-10.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent mosquito=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 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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