---
title: “I wish that flock of birds never to come back again.” — The grateful elephant · tree and pragmatics
description: “I wish that flock of birds never to come back again.” Who acts: Supremely, birds. 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 36

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“I wish that flock of birds never to come back again.”

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**Who acts:** Supremely, birds · **What happens:** wish, not come back · **To what, where:** flock

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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 (Supremely, birds), 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:pg74064:11:39
# text = “I wish that flock of birds never to come back again.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	wish	wish	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	5	det	_	_
5	flock	flock	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	birds	bird	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nsubj	_	_
8	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	10	advmod	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	come	come	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	acl:relcl	_	_
11	back	back	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
12	again	again	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wish** *in a quote* | present | Supremely | that flock |  |  |  |  | vn wish-62 «NP V NP»: agent=Pivot flock=Theme |
| 2 | **not** **come back** *in a quote* | to-infinitive | birds | that flock *not said here* |  |  | again |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=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 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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