---
title: He wrestled with the big and sluggish stone, as if it had been a liv… — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: He wrestled with the big and sluggish stone, as if it had been a living enemy. Who acts: Theseus, stone. 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 52

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He wrestled with the big and sluggish stone, as if it had been a living enemy.

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**Who acts:** Theseus, stone · **What happens:** wrestle, be · **To what, where:** living enemy

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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 (Theseus, stone), 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:pg976:3:52
# text = He wrestled with the big and sluggish stone, as if it had been a living enemy.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	wrestled	wrestle	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	with	with	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
5	big	big	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
7	sluggish	sluggish	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	conj	_	_
8	stone	stone	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
10	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	17	mark	_	_
11	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	17	mark	_	_
12	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	nsubj	_	_
13	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	17	aux	_	_
14	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	17	cop	_	_
15	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
16	living	living	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	17	amod	_	_
17	enemy	enemy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wrestle** | past | Theseus |  |  |  |  | with the big stone | vn battle-36.4-1 «NP V PP.co-agent»: agent=Agent with stone=Co-Agent |
| 2 | **is a** *a condition, not said to happen* | past · perfect | stone | a living enemy |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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