---
title: “Oh, where can my poor son be?” — Winning Buddha's smile · tree and pragmatics
description: “Oh, where can my poor son be?” Who acts: poor son. A sentence of «Winning Buddha's smile», Winning Buddha’s Smile, part 9, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Winning Buddha's smile, Winning Buddha’s Smile, part 9, sentence 127

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“Oh, where can my poor son be?”

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**Who acts:** poor son · **What happens:** be

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This is a sentence of «Winning Buddha's smile», Winning Buddha’s Smile, part 9. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (poor son), 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:pg78208:11:129
# text = “Oh, where can my poor son be?”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Oh	oh	INTJ	UH	_	9	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	_
4	where	where	ADV	WRB	PronType=Rel	9	advmod	_	_
5	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	9	aux	_	_
6	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
7	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	son	son	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj	_	_
9	be	be	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **can** *in a quote* | can | my poor son |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «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:** «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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