---
title: But in spite of this, they paid no attention to his words. — The grateful elephant · tree and pragmatics
description: But in spite of this, they paid no attention to his words. Who acts: Monks, Fowler. 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 144

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But in spite of this, they paid no attention to his words.

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**Who acts:** Monks, Fowler · **What happens:** pay, spite, word · **To what, where:** attention, spite, this

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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 (Monks, Fowler), 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:pg74064:5:148
# text = But in spite of this, they paid no attention to his words.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
2	in	in	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
3	spite	spite	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
4	of	of	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	3	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
7	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	paid	pay	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	10	det	_	_
10	attention	attention	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
11	to	to	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	words	word	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pay** | past | Monks *= monk* | no attention |  | spite of this |  | to Fowler's words | vn pay-68-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent attention=Asset |
| 2 | **spite** |  |  | this |  |  |  |  | nom spite «feeling transitive»: of=patient |
| 3 | **word** |  | Fowler |  |  |  |  |  | nom word «communication transitive»: poss=agent |

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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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