---
title: Either he or I should go first.” — The grateful elephant · tree and pragmatics
description: Either he or I should go first.” Who acts: Buddha. A sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 15, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The grateful elephant, Opening, part 15, sentence 17

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Either he or I should go first.”

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**Who acts:** Buddha · **What happens:** go

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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 (Buddha), 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:pg74064:15:17
# text = Either he or I should go first.”
1	Either	either	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc:preconj	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
3	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
4	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
5	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
6	go	go	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
7	first	first	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	6	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go** | should | Buddha |  |  |  |  | I *nsubj*; first *property* | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «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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