---
title: Seeing, he said this to that dicer: — The grateful elephant · tree and pragmatics
description: Seeing, he said this to that dicer: Who acts: leader. A sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 14, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The grateful elephant, Opening, part 14, sentence 57

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Seeing, he said this to that dicer:

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**Who acts:** leader · **What happens:** see, say · **To what, where:** this, dicer · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 14. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (leader), 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:pg74064:14:61
# text = Seeing, he said this to that dicer:
1	Seeing	see	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
3	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	4	obj	_	_
6	to	to	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	8	det	_	_
8	dicer	dicer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **see** | gerund | leader *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | leader | this | that dicer |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP PP.recipient»: agent=Agent this=Topic to dicer=Recipient |

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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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