---
title: They seated themselves and began to eat. — Winning Buddha's smile · tree and pragmatics
description: They seated themselves and began to eat. Who acts: Ki. A sentence of «Winning Buddha's smile», Winning Buddha’s Smile, part 7, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Winning Buddha's smile, Winning Buddha’s Smile, part 7, sentence 49

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They seated themselves and began to eat.

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**Who acts:** Ki · **What happens:** seat, begin, eat · **To what, where:** Ki

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This is a sentence of «Winning Buddha's smile», Winning Buddha’s Smile, part 7. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Ki), 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:pg78208:9:49
# text = They seated themselves and began to eat.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	seated	seat	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	themselves	themselves	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	2	obj	_	_
4	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
5	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	eat	eat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **seat** | past | Ki | Ki |  |  |  |  | vn fit-54.3 «NP.location V NP»: agent=Location themselves=Value |
| 2 | **begin** | past | Ki *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 3 | **eat** | to-infinitive | Ki *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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