---
title: This development took place long before the beginning of the Christi… — The grateful elephant · tree and pragmatics
description: This development took place long before the beginning of the Christian era. Who acts: development. 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 246

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This development took place long before the beginning of the Christian era.

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**Who acts:** development · **What happens:** take, begin · **To what, where:** place, beginning, Christian era

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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 (development), 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:pg74064:1:263
# text = This development took place long before the beginning of the Christian era.
1	This	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	2	det	_	_
2	development	development	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	place	place	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
5	long	long	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	3	advmod	_	_
6	before	before	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	beginning	beginning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
9	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	Christian	Christian	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	era	era	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** | past | this development | place |  |  | before the beginning of the Christian era | long *property* | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent place=Theme before beginning=Destination |
| 2 | **begin** |  |  | the Christian era |  |  |  |  | nom beginning «event transitive»: of=patient |

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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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