---
title: But an ingrate is worse than useless.] — The grateful elephant · tree and pragmatics
description: But an ingrate is worse than useless.] Who acts: ingrate. A sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 4, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The grateful elephant, Opening, part 4, sentence 62

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But an ingrate is worse than useless.\]

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**Who acts:** ingrate · **What happens:** be

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This is a sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (ingrate), 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:pg74064:4:66
# text = But an ingrate is worse than useless.]
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
2	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	ingrate	ingrate	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
5	worse	bad	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	0	root	_	_
6	than	than	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	useless	useless	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	]	]	PUNCT	-RRB-	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | a ingrate |  |  |  |  | than useless; bad *property* | tree rules |

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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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