---
title: His little friends, like all other small people, had a great opinion… — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: His little friends, like all other small people, had a great opinion of their own importance, and used to assume quite a patronizing air towards the Giant. Who acts: little friends. A sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Pygmies., part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragma
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/7/48/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Tanglewood Tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/) / [The Pygmies., part 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/7/) / 48

# Tanglewood Tales, The Pygmies., part 1, sentence 48

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
His little friends, like all other small people, had a great opinion of their own importance, and used to assume quite a patronizing air towards the Giant.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** little friends · **What happens:** have, use, assume, opine · **To what, where:** great opinion, patronizing air, own importance

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Pygmies., part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (little friends), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg976:482`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg976:7:48
# text = His little friends, like all other small people, had a great opinion of their own importance, and used to assume quite a patronizing air towards the Giant.
1	His	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	3	nmod:poss	_	_
2	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	friends	friend	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	nsubj	_	_
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
5	like	like	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
6	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	9	det	_	_
7	other	other	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
8	small	small	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nmod	_	_
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
11	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	opinion	opinion	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	_
15	of	of	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
16	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	18	nmod:poss	_	_
17	own	own	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	_
18	importance	importance	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nmod	_	_
19	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
20	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
21	used	use	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	conj	_	_
22	to	to	PART	TO	_	23	mark	_	_
23	assume	assume	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	21	xcomp	_	_
24	quite	quite	DET	PDT	PronType=Ind	27	det:predet	_	_
25	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	27	det	_	_
26	patronizing	patronizing	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	27	amod	_	_
27	air	air	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	23	obj	_	_
28	towards	towards	ADP	IN	_	30	case	_	_
29	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	30	det	_	_
30	Giant	giant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	27	nmod	_	_
31	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | Antaeus's little friends like all other small people | a great opinion of people's own importance |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent opinion=Patient |
| 2 | **use** | past | Antaeus's little friends like all other small people *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn use-105.1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 3 | **assume** | to-infinitive | Antaeus's little friends like all other small people *not said here* | quite patronizing air |  |  |  | towards the Giant | vn adopt-93.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent air=Theme |
| 4 | **opine** |  |  | people's own importance |  |  |  |  | nom opinion «cognition transitive»: of=patient |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**Text:** «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Project Gutenberg book 976 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 47](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/7/47/)
- next →: [sentence 49](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/7/49/)
- ↑ back to [The Pygmies., part 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/7/)