---
title: What are the four royal families of snakes? — The grateful elephant · tree and pragmatics
description: What are the four royal families of snakes? Who acts: four royal families. A sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 11, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The grateful elephant, Opening, part 11, sentence 155

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What are the four royal families of snakes?

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**Who acts:** four royal families · **What happens:** be

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This is a sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 11. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (four royal families), 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:pg74064:11:166
# text = What are the four royal families of snakes?
1	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	0	root	_	_
2	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	1	cop	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
4	four	four	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	6	nummod	_	_
5	royal	royal	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	families	family	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	1	nsubj	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	snakes	snake	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | the four royal families of snakes |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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