---
title: "Poor thing!" said Bruce: "you, too, know what it is to fail." — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: "Poor thing!" said Bruce: "you, too, know what it is to fail." Who acts: Bruce, thing. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Bruce and the Spider., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Bruce and the Spider., sentence 13

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"Poor thing!" said Bruce: "you, too, know what it is to fail."

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**Who acts:** Bruce, thing · **What happens:** say, know, be · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Bruce and the Spider.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Bruce, thing), 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:pg18442:12:13
# text = "Poor thing!" said Bruce: "you, too, know what it is to fail."
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	thing	thing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
6	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	Bruce	Bruce	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	10	punct	_	_
9	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
12	too	too	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
14	know	know	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	ccomp	_	_
15	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	19	obj	_	_
16	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	19	nsubj	_	_
17	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	19	cop	_	_
18	to	to	PART	TO	_	19	mark	_	_
19	fail	fail	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	14	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | Bruce |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **know** *in a quote* | infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 3 | **is** *in a quote* | present | thing |  |  |  |  | fail *property* | 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:** «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Project Gutenberg book 18442 (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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