---
title: Sitting down by the well, she exclaimed: — Gleanings from Chinese folklore · tree and pragmatics
description: Sitting down by the well, she exclaimed: Who acts: mother. A sentence of «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, A Story of Old China, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Gleanings from Chinese folklore, A Story of Old China, part 2, sentence 29

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Sitting down by the well, she exclaimed:

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**Who acts:** mother · **What happens:** sit down, exclaim

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This is a sentence of «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, A Story of Old China, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (mother), 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:pg75089:18:29
# text = Sitting down by the well, she exclaimed:
1	Sitting	sit	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	8	advcl	_	_
2	down	down	ADV	RB	_	1	advmod	_	_
3	by	by	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	well	well	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
7	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	exclaimed	exclaim	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sit down** | gerund | mother *not said here* |  |  |  |  | by the well; down *property* | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent by well=Location |
| 2 | **exclaim** *speech: express* | past | mother |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent |

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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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