---
title: See if you can lift this rock on which we are sitting?" — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: See if you can lift this rock on which we are sitting?" Who acts: you, we. A sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Minotaur., part 1, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Tanglewood Tales, The Minotaur., part 1, sentence 18

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See if you can lift this rock on which we are sitting?"

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**Who acts:** you, we · **What happens:** see, lift, sit · **To what, where:** rock

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This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Minotaur., 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 (you, we), 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:pg976:3:18
# text = See if you can lift this rock on which we are sitting?"
1	See	see	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
2	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	5	mark	_	_
3	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
4	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	lift	lift	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	1	advcl	_	_
6	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	7	det	_	_
7	rock	rock	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
8	on	on	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
9	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	12	obl	_	_
10	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
11	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
12	sitting	sit	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	7	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **see** | imperative | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 2 | **lift** *a condition, not said to happen* | can | you | this rock |  |  |  |  | vn put\_direction-9.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent rock=Theme |
| 3 | **sit** | present · progressive | we |  |  | this rock |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent on which=Location |

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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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