---
title: He never spoke to anybody without either reviling him or striking him. — The grateful elephant · tree and pragmatics
description: He never spoke to anybody without either reviling him or striking him. Who acts: Wicked. A sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The grateful elephant, Opening, part 3, sentence 117

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He never spoke to anybody without either reviling him or striking him.

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**Who acts:** Wicked · **What happens:** not speak, revile, strike · **To what, where:** Wicked · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Wicked), 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:pg74064:3:122
# text = He never spoke to anybody without either reviling him or striking him.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	3	advmod	_	_
3	spoke	speak	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	to	to	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	anybody	anybody	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	3	obl	_	_
6	without	without	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
7	either	either	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc:preconj	_	_
8	reviling	revile	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	3	advcl	_	_
9	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	obj	_	_
10	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
11	striking	strike	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	8	conj	_	_
12	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **speak** *speech: other* | past | Wicked |  |  |  |  | to anybody | vn talk-37.5 «NP V PP.co-agent»: agent=Agent to anybody=Co-Agent |
| 2 | **revile** | gerund | Wicked *not said here* | Wicked |  |  |  |  | vn judgment-33.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Theme |
| 3 | **strike** | gerund | Wicked *not said here* | Wicked |  |  |  |  | vn hit-18.1-1 «NP V NP PP»: agent=Agent he=Instrument |

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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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