---
title: "O mother, mother," cried Cadmus, "couldst thou but have seen my sis… — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: "O mother, mother," cried Cadmus, "couldst thou but have seen my sister before this hour!" Who acts: mother, thou. A sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Dragon's Teeth., part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/11/108/)

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# Tanglewood Tales, The Dragon's Teeth., part 2, sentence 108

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"O mother, mother," cried Cadmus, "couldst thou but have seen my sister before this hour!"

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**Who acts:** mother, thou · **What happens:** cry, see · **To what, where:** sister · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Dragon's Teeth., part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (mother, thou), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher.** This tree is Mova's own parse (the `en` model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg976:11:108
# text = "O mother, mother," cried Cadmus, "couldst thou but have seen my sister before this hour!"
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	O	o	INTJ	UH	_	3	discourse	_	_
3	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
5	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
8	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
9	Cadmus	Cadmus	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	flat	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
11	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	16	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	couldst	could	AUX	MD	Style=Arch|VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	_
13	thou	thou	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=2|PronType=Prs|Style=Arch	16	nsubj	_	_
14	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
15	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	_
16	seen	see	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	8	conj	_	_
17	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	18	nmod:poss	_	_
18	sister	sister	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obj	_	_
19	before	before	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
20	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	21	det	_	_
21	hour	hour	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **cry** *speech: express* | past | mother and mother |  |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **see** *in a quote* | could · perfect | thou | my sister |  |  | hour |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer sister=Stimulus |

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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:** «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Project Gutenberg book 976 (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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