---
title: We had a guard of twenty American marines. — Gleanings from Chinese folklore · tree and pragmatics
description: We had a guard of twenty American marines. Who acts: We. A sentence of «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, Chinese Heroism, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Gleanings from Chinese folklore, Chinese Heroism, sentence 10

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We had a guard of twenty American marines.

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**Who acts:** We · **What happens:** have · **To what, where:** guard

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This is a sentence of «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, Chinese Heroism. 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:pg75089:12:10
# text = We had a guard of twenty American marines.
1	We	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	guard	guard	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
6	twenty	twenty	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	8	nummod	_	_
7	American	American	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	marines	marine	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | We | a guard of twenty American marines |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent guard=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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