---
title: Leaving home and wife and son, he devoted himself for six years to f… — The grateful elephant · tree and pragmatics
description: Leaving home and wife and son, he devoted himself for six years to fasting, bodily torture, and meditation. Who acts: Gotama. A sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The grateful elephant, Opening, part 1, sentence 214

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Leaving home and wife and son, he devoted himself for six years to fasting, bodily torture, and meditation.

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**Who acts:** Gotama · **What happens:** leave, devote · **To what, where:** Gotama, fasting

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This is a sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Gotama), 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:pg74064:1:230
# text = Leaving home and wife and son, he devoted himself for six years to fasting, bodily torture, and meditation.
1	Leaving	leave	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	9	advcl	_	_
2	home	home	ADV	RB	_	1	advmod	_	_
3	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
4	wife	wife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	conj	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	son	son	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	devoted	devote	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
10	himself	himself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	9	obj	_	_
11	for	for	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	six	six	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	13	nummod	_	_
13	years	year	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obl	_	_
14	to	to	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	fasting	fasting	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
17	bodily	bodily	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	_
18	torture	torture	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	21	punct	_	_
20	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
21	meditation	meditation	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **leave** | gerund | Gotama *not said here* |  |  |  |  | wife and son *conj*; home *property* | vn escape-51.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **devote** | past | Gotama | Gotama |  |  | year | to fasting and bodily torture *goal*; meditation *parataxis* | vn dedicate-79 «NP V NP S\_ING»: agent=Agent himself=Theme to fasting=Goal |

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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 grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Project Gutenberg book 74064 (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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