---
title: Were we to drown the world with them, could the world blame us? — Tanglewood Tales · tree and pragmatics
description: Were we to drown the world with them, could the world blame us? Who acts: we, world. A sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Pygmies., part 3, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Tanglewood Tales, The Pygmies., part 3, sentence 21

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Were we to drown the world with them, could the world blame us?

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**Who acts:** we, world · **What happens:** drown, blame · **To what, where:** world, us

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This is a sentence of «Tanglewood Tales» by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Pygmies., 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 (we, world), 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:pg976:9:21
# text = Were we to drown the world with them, could the world blame us?
1	Were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
2	we	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	to	to	PART	TO	_	4	mark	_	_
4	drown	drown	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	world	world	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	with	with	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	world	world	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
13	blame	blame	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	conj	_	_
14	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **drown** | past | we | the world |  |  |  | with tears *= tear* | vn poison-42.2 «NP V NP PP.instrument»: agent=Agent world=Patient with they=Instrument |
| 2 | **blame** | could | the world | us |  |  |  |  | vn judgment-33.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent we=Theme |

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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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