---
title: It is very plain to me that he is round and tall like a tree." — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: It is very plain to me that he is round and tall like a tree." Who acts: elephant, fourth. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Blind Men and the Elephant., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Blind Men and the Elephant., sentence 19

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It is very plain to me that he is round and tall like a tree."

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**Who acts:** elephant, fourth · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** me

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Blind Men and the Elephant.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (elephant, fourth), 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:pg18442:46:19
# text = It is very plain to me that he is round and tall like a tree."
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	very	very	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	plain	plain	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	obl	_	_
7	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
9	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
10	round	round	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	advcl	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
12	tall	tall	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	conj	_	_
13	like	like	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
14	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	tree	tree	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | elephant |  | me |  |  | plain *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** | present | fourth |  |  |  |  | like a tree; round *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **be** |  | fourth *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | 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:** «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Project Gutenberg book 18442 (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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