---
title: A tale is the better for length, a ballad for its curtness. — English Fairy Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: A tale is the better for length, a ballad for its curtness. Who acts: tale. A sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, IX. Binnorie., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# English Fairy Tales, IX. Binnorie., sentence 3

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A tale is the better for length, a ballad for its curtness.

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

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This is a sentence of «English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, IX. Binnorie.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (tale), 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:pg7439:59:3
# text = A tale is the better for length, a ballad for its curtness.
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	tale	tale	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	0	root	_	_
6	for	for	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	length	length	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	ballad	ballad	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	appos	_	_
11	for	for	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	curtness	curtness	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	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 tale |  |  |  |  | for length; good *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:** «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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