---
title: Lamentations 3:39 (JPS 1917) — Wherefore doth a living man complain, a strong man because of his si… · tree and pragmatics
description: Wherefore doth a living man complain, a strong man because of his sins? Who acts: living man. Lamentations 3:39 in JPS 1917 with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Lamentations 3:39 · JPS 1917

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Wherefore doth a living man complain, a strong man because of his sins?

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**Who acts:** living man · **What happens:** complain

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This is Lamentations 3:39 · JPS 1917 in the English of the Jewish Publication Society's 1917 translation, from Mova's open Bible corpus. The page gives the sentence's syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies, parsed by Mova and checked by a teacher model — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (living man), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it. The original of the verse links back to its own tree and to the Targum.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = jps:LAM:92
# text = Wherefore doth a living man complain, a strong man because of his sins?
1	Wherefore	wherefore	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	6	advmod	_	_
2	doth	do	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Style=Arch|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	living	live	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
6	complain	complain	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
9	strong	strong	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	appos	_	_
11	because	because	ADP	IN	ExtPos=ADP	14	case	_	_
12	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	fixed	_	_
13	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	14	nmod:poss	_	_
14	sins	sin	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nmod	_	_
15	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: wh-question
- act: ask
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **complain** *speech: other* | present · do-support | a living man |  |  |  |  | wherefore *property* | vn complain-37.8 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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.

## The Hebrew of this verse {#hebrew}

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מַה־יִּתְאוֹנֵן֙ אָדָ֣ם חָ֔י גֶּ֖בֶר עַל־חֲטָאָֽיו׃ס

[Lamentations 3:39: the Hebrew tree, its pragmatics and the Targum →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/ketuvim/LAM.3.39/)

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**Source.** The Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic Text, Jewish Publication Society, 1917, from eBible.org: public domain. Sentence `jps:LAM:92` of Mova's parse database.

**The tree and the speech act** come from Mova's cycle: the small model's draft, read by a large model as teacher, passed by Mova's gates (Elamur Cosmic License). **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the chapter read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence of the chapter.

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