---
title: Blind men and elephant Udāna, 66 79 _Avoid vain wrangling_ — The grateful elephant · tree and pragmatics
description: Blind men and elephant Udāna, 66 79 _Avoid vain wrangling_ Who acts: Blind men. 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 88

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Blind men and elephant Udāna, 66 79 \_Avoid vain wrangling\_

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**Who acts:** Blind men · **What happens:** avoid, wrangle

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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 (Blind men), 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:pg74064:1:94
# text = Blind men and elephant Udāna, 66 79 _Avoid vain wrangling_
1	Blind	blind	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	amod	_	_
2	men	man	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nsubj	_	_
3	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	4	cc	_	_
4	elephant	elephant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	conj	_	_
5	Udāna	Udāna	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
7	66	66	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	8	compound	_	_
8	79	79	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	9	nummod	_	_
9	_	_	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	Avoid	avoid	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	vain	vain	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	wrangling	wrangle	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	10	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	_	_	PUNCT	NFP	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **avoid** | present | Blind men and elephant and 79 \_ |  |  |  |  |  | vn avoid-52 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **wrangle** | gerund | Blind men and elephant and 79 \_ *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn battle-36.4 «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 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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