---
title: The boy could hear him talking. — The Punishment of the Stingy, and Other Indian S… · tree and pragmatics
description: The boy could hear him talking. Who acts: boy, latter. A sentence of «The Punishment of the Stingy, and Other Indian Stories» by George Bird Grinnell, The Grizzly Bear’s Medicine, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Punishment of the Stingy, and Other Indian Stories, The Grizzly Bear’s Medicine, sentence 42

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The boy could hear him talking.

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**Who acts:** boy, latter · **What happens:** hear, talk · **To what, where:** latter

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This is a sentence of «The Punishment of the Stingy, and Other Indian Stories» by George Bird Grinnell, The Grizzly Bear’s Medicine. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (boy, latter), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg66596:10:42
# text = The boy could hear him talking.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	hear	hear	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obj	_	_
6	talking	talk	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	4	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hear** | could | the boy | latter |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **talk** | gerund | latter *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn talk-37.5 «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.

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**Text:** «The Punishment of the Stingy, and Other Indian Stories» by George Bird Grinnell, Project Gutenberg book 66596 (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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