---
title: The man took them and went and sold them. — The grateful elephant · tree and pragmatics
description: The man took them and went and sold them. Who acts: man. A sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 5, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The grateful elephant, Opening, part 5, sentence 1

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The man took them and went and sold them.

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**Who acts:** man · **What happens:** take, go, sell · **To what, where:** them

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This is a sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 5. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man), 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:pg74064:5:1
# text = The man took them and went and sold them.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	took	take	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
6	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	sold	sell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
9	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **take** | past | the man | them *= they* |  |  |  |  | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Theme |
| 2 | **go** | past | the man *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **sell** | past | the man *not said here* | them *= they* |  |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=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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