---
title: If it lacks roots and hard food and soft food, it is called a famine… — The grateful elephant · tree and pragmatics
description: If it lacks roots and hard food and soft food, it is called a famine-wilderness. Who acts: wilderness. 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/pg74064/15/34/)

<!-- 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/) / 34

# The grateful elephant, Opening, part 15, sentence 34

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
If it lacks roots and hard food and soft food, it is called a famine-wilderness.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** wilderness · **What happens:** lack, call · **To what, where:** roots, wilderness · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .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 (wilderness), 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:pg74064:15:34
# text = If it lacks roots and hard food and soft food, it is called a famine-wilderness.
1	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	3	mark	_	_
2	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	lacks	lack	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	advcl	_	_
4	roots	root	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obj	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
6	hard	hard	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	food	food	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	conj	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
9	soft	soft	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	food	food	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
12	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj:pass	_	_
13	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	aux:pass	_	_
14	called	call	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
15	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
16	famine	famine	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	16	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	wilderness	wilderness	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **lack** *a condition, not said to happen* | present | wilderness | roots and hard food and soft food |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **call** | present · passive |  | wilderness |  |  |  | a famine wilderness *xcomp* | vn initiate\_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: subject=Recipient |

<!-- .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 33](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg74064/15/33/)
- next →: [sentence 35](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg74064/15/35/)
- ↑ back to [Opening, part 15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg74064/15/)