---
title: They gave no answer, but sat motionless and gazed upon the ground. — Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains · tree and pragmatics
description: They gave no answer, but sat motionless and gazed upon the ground. Who acts: men. A sentence of «Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains» by Toofie Lauder, Legends and Tales., part 10, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains, Legends and Tales., part 10, sentence 35

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They gave no answer, but sat motionless and gazed upon the ground.

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**Who acts:** men · **What happens:** give, sit, gaze · **To what, where:** answer

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This is a sentence of «Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains» by Toofie Lauder, Legends and Tales., part 10. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (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:pg74323:11:35
# text = They gave no answer, but sat motionless and gazed upon the ground.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	gave	give	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	4	det	_	_
4	answer	answer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
6	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
8	motionless	motionless	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	xcomp	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	gazed	gaze	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	conj	_	_
11	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	ground	ground	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	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 | **give** | past | men *= man* | no answer |  |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent answer=Theme |
| 2 | **sit** | past |  |  |  |  |  | motionless *property* | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **gaze** | past |  |  |  |  |  | upon the ground | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent upon ground=Theme |

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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:** «Legends and tales of the Harz Mountains» by Toofie Lauder, Project Gutenberg book 74323 (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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