---
title: “Tell me, then, who is the writer of this letter?” — Winning Buddha's smile · tree and pragmatics
description: “Tell me, then, who is the writer of this letter?” Who acts: you. A sentence of «Winning Buddha's smile», Winning Buddha’s Smile, part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg78208/3/117/)

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# Winning Buddha's smile, Winning Buddha’s Smile, part 1, sentence 117

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“Tell me, then, who is the writer of this letter?”

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**Who acts:** you · **What happens:** tell, be · **To what, where:** King, writer · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Winning Buddha's smile», Winning Buddha’s Smile, part 1. 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:pg78208:3:117
# text = “Tell me, then, who is the writer of this letter?”
1	“	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
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	,	_	2	punct	_	_
5	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	2	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
7	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	10	nsubj	_	_
8	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	writer	writer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	parataxis	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	13	det	_	_
13	letter	letter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	”	"	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* *in a quote* | imperative | you *not said here* |  | King |  | then |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent i=Recipient |
| 2 | **is a** *in a quote* | present |  | the writer |  |  |  | of this letter; who *nsubj* | 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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