---
title: The stories themselves give us the answer. — The grateful elephant · tree and pragmatics
description: The stories themselves give us the answer. Who acts: stories. A sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The grateful elephant, Opening, part 2, sentence 27

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The stories themselves give us the answer.

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**Who acts:** stories · **What happens:** give · **To what, where:** answer, us

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This is a sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (stories), 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:pg74064:2:29
# text = The stories themselves give us the answer.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	stories	story	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
3	themselves	themselves	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	2	nmod	_	_
4	give	give	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	iobj	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	answer	answer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **give** | present | the stories  stories | the answer | us |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent we=Recipient answer=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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