---
title: “But has any one of you seen a flash of lightning?” — The grateful elephant · tree and pragmatics
description: “But has any one of you seen a flash of lightning?” Who acts: one, lightning. A sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 15, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg74064/15/105/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The grateful elephant](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg74064/) / [Opening, part 15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg74064/15/) / 105

# The grateful elephant, Opening, part 15, sentence 105

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
“But has any one of you seen a flash of lightning?”

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** one, lightning · **What happens:** have, see, flash · **To what, where:** one, flash

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 15. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (one, lightning), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg74064:15:105
# text = “But has any one of you seen a flash of lightning?”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
3	has	have	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	any	any	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	5	det	_	_
5	one	one	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nmod	_	_
8	seen	see	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	5	acl	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	flash	flash	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	lightning	lightning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** *in a quote* | present |  | any one of you |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent one=Patient |
| 2 | **see** *in a quote* | participle | any one of you *not said here* | a flash of lightning |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer flash=Stimulus |
| 3 | **flash** *in a quote* |  | lightning |  |  |  |  |  | nom flash «event intransitive»: of=agent |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 104](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg74064/15/104/)
- next →: [sentence 106](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg74064/15/106/)
- ↑ back to [Opening, part 15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg74064/15/)