---
title: One night the ghosts went out to buy a wife. — The Punishment of the Stingy, and Other Indian S… · tree and pragmatics
description: One night the ghosts went out to buy a wife. Who acts: ghosts. A sentence of «The Punishment of the Stingy, and Other Indian Stories» by George Bird Grinnell, Bluejay Visits the Ghosts, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The Punishment of the Stingy, and Other Indian Stories, Bluejay Visits the Ghosts, sentence 2

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One night the ghosts went out to buy a wife.

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**Who acts:** ghosts · **What happens:** go out, buy · **To what, where:** wife

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This is a sentence of «The Punishment of the Stingy, and Other Indian Stories» by George Bird Grinnell, Bluejay Visits the Ghosts. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (ghosts), 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:pg66596:6:2
# text = One night the ghosts went out to buy a wife.
1	One	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	2	nummod	_	_
2	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl:unmarked	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	ghosts	ghost	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
5	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	out	out	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	buy	buy	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	xcomp	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go out** | past | the ghosts |  |  |  | night | out *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **buy** | to-infinitive | the ghosts *not said here* | a wife |  |  |  |  | vn accept-77.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent wife=Theme |

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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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