---
title: “Little better than a beggar,” said the Town Councillors. — The Happy Prince, and Other Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: “Little better than a beggar,” said the Town Councillors. Who acts: better. A sentence of «The Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Opening, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg902/2/43/)

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# The Happy Prince, and Other Tales, Opening, part 2, sentence 43

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“Little better than a beggar,” said the Town Councillors.

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**Who acts:** better · **What happens:** say · **To what, where:** Town Councillors · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Opening, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (better), 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:pg902:2:43
# text = “Little better than a beggar,” said the Town Councillors.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Little	little	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	3	advmod	_	_
3	better	good	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	9	nsubj	_	_
4	than	than	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	beggar	beggar	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	Town	Town	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	compound	_	_
12	Councillors	Councillor	PROPN	NNPS	Number=Plur	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | better | the Town Councillors |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent councillor=Topic |

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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 Happy Prince, and Other Tales» by Oscar Wilde, Project Gutenberg book 902 (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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- ← previous: [sentence 42](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg902/2/42/)
- next →: [sentence 44](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg902/2/44/)
- ↑ back to [Opening, part 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg902/2/)