---
title: The cunning Medea observed what was passing in the young man's mind. — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: The cunning Medea observed what was passing in the young man's mind. Who acts: cunning, young man. A sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Minotaur., part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Tanglewood Tales, The Minotaur., part 2, sentence 23

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The cunning Medea observed what was passing in the young man's mind.

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**Who acts:** cunning, young man · **What happens:** observe, pass, mind · **To what, where:** mind

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This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Minotaur., 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 (cunning, young man), 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:pg976:4:23
# text = The cunning Medea observed what was passing in the young man's mind.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	cunning	cunning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	Medea	Medea	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	appos	_	_
4	observed	observe	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	7	nsubj	_	_
6	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
7	passing	pass	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	ccomp	_	_
8	in	in	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
10	young	young	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	's	's	PART	POS	_	11	case	_	_
13	mind	mind	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **observe** | past | the cunning |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **pass** | past · progressive |  |  |  | the young man's mind |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme in mind=Location |
| 3 | **mind** |  | the young man |  |  |  |  |  | nom mind «cognition transitive»: poss=agent |

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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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