---
title: But Mother Ceres was a great way off, and could not hear the cry. — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: But Mother Ceres was a great way off, and could not hear the cry. Who acts: Mother. A sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Pomegranate Seeds., part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Tanglewood Tales, The Pomegranate Seeds., part 1, sentence 70

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But Mother Ceres was a great way off, and could not hear the cry.

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**Who acts:** Mother · **What happens:** be, not hear · **To what, where:** great way, cry

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This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Pomegranate Seeds., part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Mother), 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:pg976:20:70
# text = But Mother Ceres was a great way off, and could not hear the cry.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	2	cc	_	_
2	Mother	Mother	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
3	Ceres	Ceres	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	flat	_	_
4	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
8	off	off	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
11	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
12	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	13	advmod	_	_
13	hear	hear	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	7	parataxis	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	cry	cry	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | Mother | a great way |  |  |  | off *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **not** **hear** | could |  | the cry |  |  |  |  | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V S»: agent=Experiencer cry=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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