---
title: But tell me--is there no way to open the spring?” — The man who married the moon, and other Pueblo I… · tree and pragmatics
description: But tell me--is there no way to open the spring?” Who acts: you. A sentence of «The man who married the moon, and other Pueblo Indian folk-stories» by Charles Fletcher Lummis, The Man Who Wouldn’t Keep Sunday, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# The man who married the moon, and other Pueblo Indian folk-stories, The Man Who Wouldn’t Keep Sunday, sentence 53

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But tell me--is there no way to open the spring?”

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** tell, be, open · **To what, where:** me, way · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «The man who married the moon, and other Pueblo Indian folk-stories» by Charles Fletcher Lummis, The Man Who Wouldn’t Keep Sunday. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you), 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:pg77804:25:53
# text = But tell me--is there no way to open the spring?”
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	2	cc	_	_
2	tell	tell	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	2	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
6	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	5	expl	_	_
7	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	8	det	_	_
8	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	open	open	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	acl	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	spring	spring	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	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 | **tell** *speech: assert* | imperative | you *not said here* |  | me |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent i=Recipient |
| 2 | **is a** | present |  | no way |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **open** | to-infinitive | you *not said here* |  |  |  | spring |  | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V»: agent=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:** «The man who married the moon, and other Pueblo Indian folk-stories» by Charles Fletcher Lummis, Project Gutenberg book 77804 (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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