---
title: The General bowed in a sign of obedience and withdrew. — Winning Buddha's smile · tree and pragmatics
description: The General bowed in a sign of obedience and withdrew. Who acts: General. A sentence of «Winning Buddha's smile», Winning Buddha’s Smile, part 6, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg78208/8/17/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Winning Buddha's smile](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg78208/) / [Winning Buddha’s Smile, part 6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg78208/8/) / 17

# Winning Buddha's smile, Winning Buddha’s Smile, part 6, sentence 17

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The General bowed in a sign of obedience and withdrew.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** General · **What happens:** bow, withdraw, sign · **To what, where:** sign, obedience

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Winning Buddha's smile», Winning Buddha’s Smile, part 6. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (General), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg78208:8:17
# text = The General bowed in a sign of obedience and withdrew.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	General	General	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	bowed	bow	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	in	in	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	sign	sign	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	obedience	obedience	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	withdrew	withdraw	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **bow** | past | the General |  |  | a sign of obedience |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent in sign=Location |
| 2 | **withdraw** | past | the General *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **sign** |  |  | obedience |  |  |  |  | nom sign «communication transitive»: of=patient |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg78208/8/16/)
- next →: [sentence 18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg78208/8/18/)
- ↑ back to [Winning Buddha’s Smile, part 6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg78208/8/)