---
title: And knife in hand, he started after him. — The grateful elephant · tree and pragmatics
description: And knife in hand, he started after him. Who acts: weak. 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 58

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And knife in hand, he started after him.

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**Who acts:** weak · **What happens:** start · **To what, where:** knife

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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 (weak), 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:pg74064:7:61
# text = And knife in hand, he started after him.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	2	cc	_	_
2	knife	knife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	_
3	in	in	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	hand	hand	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
7	started	start	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	after	after	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **start** | past | weak | knife in hand |  |  | after Hunter |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=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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