---
title: Those who had felt of the legs, said: “An elephant is like pillars.” — The grateful elephant · tree and pragmatics
description: Those who had felt of the legs, said: “An elephant is like pillars.” Who acts: Those, elephant. 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 131

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Those who had felt of the legs, said: “An elephant is like pillars.”

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**Who acts:** Those, elephant · **What happens:** feel, say, be · **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 (Those, elephant), 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:pg74064:9:138
# text = Those who had felt of the legs, said: “An elephant is like pillars.”
1	Those	that	PRON	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	9	nsubj	_	_
2	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	4	nsubj	_	_
3	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	felt	feel	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	1	acl:relcl	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	legs	leg	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
9	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	9	punct	_	_
11	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	16	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	An	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	elephant	elephant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nsubj	_	_
14	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	16	cop	_	_
15	like	like	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	pillars	pillar	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	16	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	16	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **feel** | past · perfect |  |  |  |  |  | of the legs; who *nsubj* | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Those |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is** *in a quote* | present | a elephant |  |  |  |  | like pillars | 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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