---
title: At the mouth of the forest he told his story to human beings. — The grateful elephant · tree and pragmatics
description: At the mouth of the forest he told his story to human beings. Who acts: Buddha. A sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 8, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg74064/8/66/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [The grateful elephant](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg74064/) / [Opening, part 8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg74064/8/) / 66

# The grateful elephant, Opening, part 8, sentence 66

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
At the mouth of the forest he told his story to human beings.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Buddha · **What happens:** tell · **To what, where:** story, human beings, mouth · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 8. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Buddha), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg74064:8:66
# text = At the mouth of the forest he told his story to human beings.
1	At	at	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	mouth	mouth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
4	of	of	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	forest	forest	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	_
7	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	story	story	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
11	to	to	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	human	human	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	beings	being	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | Buddha | Buddha's story | human beings | the mouth of the forest |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.recipient»: agent=Agent story=Topic to being=Recipient |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 65](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg74064/8/65/)
- next →: [sentence 67](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg74064/8/67/)
- ↑ back to [Opening, part 8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg74064/8/)