---
title: _ Before beginning play, dicers would draw a circle on the ground or… — The grateful elephant · tree and pragmatics
description: _ Before beginning play, dicers would draw a circle on the ground or floor. Who acts: dicers. A sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 17, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg74064/17/108/)

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# The grateful elephant, Opening, part 17, sentence 108

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\_ Before beginning play, dicers would draw a circle on the ground or floor.

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**Who acts:** dicers · **What happens:** begin, draw · **To what, where:** circle, ground

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This is a sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 17. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (dicers), 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:pg74064:17:109
# text = _ Before beginning play, dicers would draw a circle on the ground or floor.
1	_	_	PUNCT	NFP	_	8	punct	_	_
2	Before	before	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
3	beginning	begin	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	4	amod	_	_
4	play	play	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
6	dicers	dicer	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nsubj	_	_
7	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	draw	draw	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
9	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	circle	circle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
11	on	on	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	ground	ground	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	_
14	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	15	cc	_	_
15	floor	floor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **begin** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality |
| 2 | **draw** | would | dicers | a circle |  | the ground or floor | before beginning play |  | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent circle=Theme on ground=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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