---
title: So feigning weakness, he showed himself to the hunter. — The grateful elephant · tree and pragmatics
description: So feigning weakness, he showed himself to the hunter. Who acts: Tortoise. A sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 7, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The grateful elephant, Opening, part 7, sentence 56

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So feigning weakness, he showed himself to the hunter.

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**Who acts:** Tortoise · **What happens:** feign, show · **To what, where:** weakness, Tortoise

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This is a sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 7. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Tortoise), 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:pg74064:7:59
# text = So feigning weakness, he showed himself to the hunter.
1	So	so	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
2	feigning	feign	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	6	advcl	_	_
3	weakness	weakness	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
5	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	showed	show	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	himself	himself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	6	iobj	_	_
8	to	to	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	hunter	hunter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **feign** | gerund | Tortoise *not said here* | weakness |  |  |  |  | vn establish-55.5-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent weakness=Patient |
| 2 | **show** | past | Tortoise |  | Tortoise |  |  | to the hunter | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.recipient»: agent=Agent himself=Topic to hunter=Recipient |

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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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