---
title: They are the farmer's cattle, trying to find their way home. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: They are the farmer's cattle, trying to find their way home. Who acts: people. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Black Douglas., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Black Douglas., sentence 17

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They are the farmer's cattle, trying to find their way home.

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**Who acts:** people · **What happens:** be, try, find · **To what, where:** cattle, way

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Black Douglas.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (people), 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:pg18442:13:17
# text = They are the farmer's cattle, trying to find their way home.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
2	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	farmer	farmer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	's	's	PART	POS	_	4	case	_	_
6	cattle	cattle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
8	trying	try	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	6	conj	_	_
9	to	to	PART	TO	_	10	mark	_	_
10	find	find	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	xcomp	_	_
11	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	12	nmod:poss	_	_
12	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
13	home	home	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | people | the farmer's cattle |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **try** | gerund | people *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 3 | **find** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | people *not said here* | people's way |  |  |  | home *property* | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent way=Topic |

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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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