---
title: You cannot even drink without swallowing life. — In Ghostly Japan · tree and pragmatics
description: You cannot even drink without swallowing life. Who acts: You. A sentence of «In Ghostly Japan» by Lafcadio Hearn, Names of Incense Used., part 7, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# In Ghostly Japan, Names of Incense Used., part 7, sentence 52

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You cannot even drink without swallowing life.

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**Who acts:** You · **What happens:** not drink, swallow · **To what, where:** life

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This is a sentence of «In Ghostly Japan» by Lafcadio Hearn, Names of Incense Used., 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 (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:pg8128:9:52
# text = You cannot even drink without swallowing life.
1	You	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
2	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
4	even	even	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	drink	drink	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	without	without	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
7	swallowing	swallow	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	5	advcl	_	_
8	life	life	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **drink** | can | You |  |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **swallow** | gerund | You *not said here* | life |  |  |  |  | vn gobble-39.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent life=Patient |

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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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