---
title: He kept a light burning to guide her. — In Ghostly Japan · tree and pragmatics
description: He kept a light burning to guide her. Who acts: Otokichi, light. A sentence of «In Ghostly Japan» by Lafcadio Hearn, Story of a Tengu[1], 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/pg8128/27/138/)

<!-- 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/) / [In Ghostly Japan](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8128/) / [Story of a Tengu\[1\]](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8128/27/) / 138

# In Ghostly Japan, Story of a Tengu\[1\], sentence 138

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
He kept a light burning to guide her.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Otokichi, light · **What happens:** keep, burn, guide · **To what, where:** light, daughter

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «In Ghostly Japan» by Lafcadio Hearn, Story of a Tengu\[1\]. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Otokichi, light), 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:pg8128:27:139
# text = He kept a light burning to guide her.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	kept	keep	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	light	light	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	burning	burn	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	2	xcomp	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	guide	guide	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	xcomp	_	_
8	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **keep** | past | Otokichi | a light |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **burn** | gerund | a light *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **guide** | to-infinitive | a light *not said here* | daughter |  |  |  |  | vn accompany-51.7 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent she=Theme |

<!-- .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:** «In Ghostly Japan» by Lafcadio Hearn, Project Gutenberg book 8128 (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 137](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8128/27/137/)
- next →: [sentence 139](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8128/27/139/)
- ↑ back to [Story of a Tengu\[1\]](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8128/27/)