---
title: "And is he a live giant, or a brazen image?" asked Theseus. — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: "And is he a live giant, or a brazen image?" asked Theseus. Who acts: Talus, live giant. A sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Minotaur., part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg976/5/35/)

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# Tanglewood Tales, The Minotaur., part 3, sentence 35

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"And is he a live giant, or a brazen image?" asked Theseus.

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**Who acts:** Talus, live giant · **What happens:** be, ask · **To what, where:** live giant, Theseus · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Minotaur., 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 (Talus, live giant), 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:pg976:5:35
# text = "And is he a live giant, or a brazen image?" asked Theseus.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	7	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	7	cc	_	_
3	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
4	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	live	live	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	giant	giant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
9	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	brazen	brazen	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	image	image	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	12	punct	_	_
15	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
16	Theseus	Theseus	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	15	iobj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	15	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** *in a quote* | present | Talus | a live giant |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | a live giant |  | Theseus |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent theseus=Recipient |

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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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