---
title: “We have no dainty food to eat, only grain and wild roots without sa… — Gleanings from Chinese folklore · tree and pragmatics
description: “We have no dainty food to eat, only grain and wild roots without salt. Who acts: We. A sentence of «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, A Chinese Tea-house Story, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Gleanings from Chinese folklore, A Chinese Tea-house Story, sentence 129

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“We have no dainty food to eat, only grain and wild roots without salt.

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**Who acts:** We · **What happens:** have, eat · **To what, where:** dainty food, grain

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This is a sentence of «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, A Chinese Tea-house Story. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (We), 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:pg75089:10:129
# text = “We have no dainty food to eat, only grain and wild roots without salt.
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	We	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	have	have	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	6	det	_	_
5	dainty	dainty	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	compound	_	_
6	food	food	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	eat	eat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	acl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
10	only	only	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
11	grain	grain	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
13	wild	wild	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	roots	root	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	conj	_	_
15	without	without	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	salt	salt	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** *in a quote* | present | We | no dainty food |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent food=Patient |
| 2 | **eat** *in a quote* | to-infinitive | We *not said here* | grain and wild roots |  |  |  | without salt | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent grain=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:** «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, Project Gutenberg book 75089 (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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