---
title: “Pardon my curiosity, sir--but this situation is a strange one.” — Winning Buddha's smile · tree and pragmatics
description: “Pardon my curiosity, sir--but this situation is a strange one.” Who acts: you, situation. A sentence of «Winning Buddha's smile», Winning Buddha’s Smile, part 8, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Winning Buddha's smile, Winning Buddha’s Smile, part 8, sentence 137

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“Pardon my curiosity, sir--but this situation is a strange one.”

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**Who acts:** you, situation · **What happens:** pardon, be · **To what, where:** curiosity, strange one

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This is a sentence of «Winning Buddha's smile», Winning Buddha’s Smile, part 8. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, situation), 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:pg78208:10:139
# text = “Pardon my curiosity, sir--but this situation is a strange one.”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Pardon	pardon	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	curiosity	curiosity	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
6	sir	sir	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
9	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	10	det	_	_
10	situation	situation	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
11	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	strange	strange	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	one	one	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pardon** *in a quote* | imperative | you *not said here* | my curiosity and sir |  |  |  |  | vn judgment-33.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent curiosity=Theme |
| 2 | **is a** *in a quote* | present | this situation | a strange one |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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:** «Winning Buddha's smile», Project Gutenberg book 78208 (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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