---
title: He looked again at the tombs; but the tombs explained nothing. — In Ghostly Japan · tree and pragmatics
description: He looked again at the tombs; but the tombs explained nothing. Who acts: lantern, tombs. A sentence of «In Ghostly Japan» by Lafcadio Hearn, Names of Incense Used., part 4, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# In Ghostly Japan, Names of Incense Used., part 4, sentence 55

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He looked again at the tombs; but the tombs explained nothing.

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**Who acts:** lantern, tombs · **What happens:** look, explain · **To what, where:** nothing

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This is a sentence of «In Ghostly Japan» by Lafcadio Hearn, Names of Incense Used., part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (lantern, tombs), 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:pg8128:6:55
# text = He looked again at the tombs; but the tombs explained nothing.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	looked	look	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	again	again	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
4	at	at	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	tombs	tomb	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
8	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	tombs	tomb	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	nsubj	_	_
11	explained	explain	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
12	nothing	nothing	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **look** | past | lantern |  |  |  | again | at the tombs | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent at tomb=Theme |
| 2 | **explain** *speech: assert* | past | the tombs | nothing |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent nothing=Topic |

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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:** «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.

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