---
title: “We, your majesty, would cut off his head.” — The grateful elephant · tree and pragmatics
description: “We, your majesty, would cut off his head.” Who acts: We. A sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 6, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The grateful elephant, Opening, part 6, sentence 121

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“We, your majesty, would cut off his head.”

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**Who acts:** We · **What happens:** cut off · **To what, where:** head

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This is a sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 6. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (We), 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:pg74064:6:121
# text = “We, your majesty, would cut off his head.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	We	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
4	your	your	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
5	majesty	majesty	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
7	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	cut	cut	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
9	off	off	ADP	RP	_	8	compound:prt	_	_
10	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	head	head	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **cut off** *in a quote* | would | We | king's head |  |  |  |  | vn stop-55.4-1 «NP V NP.eventuality»: agent=Affector head=Eventuality |

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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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