---
title: _Evil communications corrupt good manners. — The grateful elephant · tree and pragmatics
description: _Evil communications corrupt good manners. Who acts: Evil communications. 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 140

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\_Evil communications corrupt good manners.

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**Who acts:** Evil communications · **What happens:** corrupt · **To what, where:** good manners

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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 (Evil communications), 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:pg74064:9:148
# text = _Evil communications corrupt good manners.
1	_	_	PUNCT	NFP	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Evil	evil	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	communications	communication	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj	_	_
4	corrupt	corrupt	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	manners	manners	NOUN	NNS	Number=Ptan	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **corrupt** | present | Evil communications | good manners |  |  |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent manners=Patient |

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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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