---
title: “Tell me, blind men, what is an elephant like?” — The grateful elephant · tree and pragmatics
description: “Tell me, blind men, what is an elephant like?” Who acts: you, blind men. A sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 9, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The grateful elephant, Opening, part 9, sentence 125

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“Tell me, blind men, what is an elephant like?”

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**Who acts:** you, blind men · **What happens:** tell, be · **To what, where:** blind men, king, elephant · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 9. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, blind men), 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:pg74064:9:132
# text = “Tell me, blind men, what is an elephant like?”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Tell	tell	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
5	blind	blind	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	men	man	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
8	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	11	nsubj	_	_
9	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
10	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	elephant	elephant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	appos	_	_
12	like	like	ADP	IN	_	11	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | imperative | you *not said here* | blind men | king |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent i=Recipient man=Topic |
| 2 | **is a** *in a quote* | present | blind men | a elephant |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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