---
title: "Pray excuse me," replied Phoebus, with an elegant obeisance. " — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: "Pray excuse me," replied Phoebus, with an elegant obeisance. " Who acts: Pray, Phoebus. A sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Pomegranate Seeds., part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Tanglewood Tales, The Pomegranate Seeds., part 3, sentence 69

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"Pray excuse me," replied Phoebus, with an elegant obeisance. "

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**Who acts:** Pray, Phoebus · **What happens:** excuse, reply · **To what, where:** Phoebus · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Pomegranate Seeds., part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Pray, Phoebus), 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:pg976:22:69
# text = "Pray excuse me," replied Phoebus, with an elegant obeisance. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Pray	pray	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	excuse	excuse	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	ccomp	_	_
4	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
7	replied	reply	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	Phoebus	Phoebus	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	with	with	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
11	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
12	elegant	elegant	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	amod	_	_
13	obeisance	obeisance	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
15	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **excuse** *in a quote* | infinitive | Pray | Phoebus |  |  |  |  | vn judgment-33.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent i=Theme |
| 2 | **reply** *speech: assert* | past | Phoebus |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1 «NP V S-Quote»: agent=Agent clause=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:** «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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