---
title: I ate its fruits and dropped its seed in this place. — The grateful elephant · tree and pragmatics
description: I ate its fruits and dropped its seed in this place. Who acts: I. A sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 12, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The grateful elephant, Opening, part 12, sentence 118

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I ate its fruits and dropped its seed in this place.

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** eat, drop · **To what, where:** fruits, seed, place

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This is a sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 12. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), 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:pg74064:12:123
# text = I ate its fruits and dropped its seed in this place.
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	ate	eat	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	fruits	fruit	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	dropped	drop	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
7	its	its	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	seed	seed	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	_
9	in	in	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	11	det	_	_
11	place	place	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **eat** | past | I | place's fruits |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent fruit=Patient |
| 2 | **drop** | past | I *not said here* | place's seed |  | this place |  |  | vn put\_direction-9.4 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent seed=Theme in place=Destination |

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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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