---
title: But nobody told her anything that would enable the poor mother to gu… — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: But nobody told her anything that would enable the poor mother to guess what had become of Proserpina. Who acts: nobody. A sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Pomegranate Seeds., part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Tanglewood Tales, The Pomegranate Seeds., part 2, sentence 63

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But nobody told her anything that would enable the poor mother to guess what had become of Proserpina.

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**Who acts:** nobody · **What happens:** tell, enable, guess, become · **To what, where:** anything, mother, poor mother · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Pomegranate Seeds., 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 (nobody), 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:pg976:21:63
# text = But nobody told her anything that would enable the poor mother to guess what had become of Proserpina.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	nobody	nobody	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Neg	3	nsubj	_	_
3	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	iobj	_	_
5	anything	anything	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	3	obj	_	_
6	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	8	nsubj	_	_
7	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	enable	enable	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	acl:relcl	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obj	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
13	guess	guess	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	csubj	_	_
14	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	16	nsubj	_	_
15	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	16	aux	_	_
16	become	become	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	13	ccomp	_	_
17	of	of	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	Proserpina	Proserpina	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | nobody | anything | mother |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent she=Recipient anything=Topic |
| 2 | **enable** | would |  | the poor mother |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **guess** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn discover-84 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 4 | **become** | past · perfect |  |  |  |  |  | of Proserpina | vn become-109.1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=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:** «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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