---
title: Before I descended into the valley from the prairie I looked careful… — The Punishment of the Stingy, and Other Indian S… · tree and pragmatics
description: Before I descended into the valley from the prairie I looked carefully over it, up and down.” Who acts: I. A sentence of «The Punishment of the Stingy, and Other Indian Stories» by George Bird Grinnell, The Beaver Stick, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66596/17/45/)

<!-- 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/) / [The Punishment of the Stingy, and Othe…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66596/) / [The Beaver Stick](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66596/17/) / 45

# The Punishment of the Stingy, and Other Indian Stories, The Beaver Stick, sentence 45

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Before I descended into the valley from the prairie I looked carefully over it, up and down.”

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** descend, look · **To what, where:** valley

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The Punishment of the Stingy, and Other Indian Stories» by George Bird Grinnell, The Beaver Stick. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg66596:17:45
# text = Before I descended into the valley from the prairie I looked carefully over it, up and down.”
1	Before	before	SCONJ	IN	_	3	mark	_	_
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	descended	descend	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	advcl	_	_
4	into	into	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	valley	valley	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
7	from	from	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	prairie	prairie	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
10	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	looked	look	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	carefully	carefully	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
13	over	over	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
16	up	up	ADV	RB	_	11	parataxis	_	_
17	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	18	cc	_	_
18	down	down	ADV	RB	_	16	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **descend** | past | I |  |  | the valley |  | from the prairie | vn escape-51.1-1-3 «NP V PP.initial\_location PP.destination»: agent=Theme into valley=Initial\_Location from prairie=Destination |
| 2 | **look** | past | I |  |  |  |  | over prairie; carefully *property* | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent over it=Theme |

<!-- .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:** «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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 44](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66596/17/44/)
- next →: [sentence 46](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66596/17/46/)
- ↑ back to [The Beaver Stick](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg66596/17/)