---
title: How they contrived to keep themselves alive is more than I can imagi… — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: How they contrived to keep themselves alive is more than I can imagine. Who acts: streets, I. A sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Golden Fleece., part 5, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Tanglewood Tales, The Golden Fleece., part 5, sentence 67

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How they contrived to keep themselves alive is more than I can imagine.

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**Who acts:** streets, I · **What happens:** contrive, keep, be, imagine · **To what, where:** streets

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This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Golden Fleece., part 5. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (streets, I), 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:pg976:29:67
# text = How they contrived to keep themselves alive is more than I can imagine.
1	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	3	advmod	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	contrived	contrive	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	advcl	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	5	mark	_	_
5	keep	keep	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	xcomp	_	_
6	themselves	themselves	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	5	obj	_	_
7	alive	alive	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	xcomp	_	_
8	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	9	cop	_	_
9	more	more	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	0	root	_	_
10	than	than	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
11	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
12	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
13	imagine	imagine	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **contrive** | past | streets *= street* |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **keep** | to-infinitive | streets *= street* *not said here* | streets *= street* |  |  |  | alive *property* | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent themselves=Theme |
| 3 | **is** | present |  |  |  |  |  | more *property* | tree rules |
| 4 | **imagine** | can | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn wish-62 «NP V for NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot |

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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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