---
title: “But middling; he cobbles old shoes, and he has nothing but cabbage… — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “But middling; he cobbles old shoes, and he has nothing but cabbage for victuals.” Who acts: man. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Jack Hannaford, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, Jack Hannaford, sentence 17

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“But middling; he cobbles old shoes, and he has nothing but cabbage for victuals.”

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**Who acts:** man · **What happens:** cobble, have · **To what, where:** middling, nothing

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Jack Hannaford. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man), 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:pg7439:13:17
# text = “But middling; he cobbles old shoes, and he has nothing but cabbage for victuals.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
3	middling	middling	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
5	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	cobbles	cobble	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	shoes	shoe	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
11	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	has	have	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
13	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	12	obj	_	_
14	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
15	cabbage	cabbage	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	conj	_	_
16	for	for	ADP	IN	_	17	case	_	_
17	victuals	victual	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **cobble** *in a quote* | present | man | middling |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **have** *in a quote* | present | man | nothing |  |  |  | for victuals | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent nothing=Patient |

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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:** «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 7439 (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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