---
title: After a little while she began to sing to her child:-- — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: After a little while she began to sing to her child:-- Who acts: care. 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 27

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After a little while she began to sing to her child:--

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**Who acts:** care · **What happens:** begin, sing · **To what, where:** child

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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 (care), 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:pg18442:13:27
# text = After a little while she began to sing to her child:--
1	After	after	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
4	while	while	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
5	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	advcl	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	sing	sing	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	xcomp	_	_
9	to	to	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	child	child	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	--	--	PUNCT	NFP	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **begin** | past | care |  |  |  |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **sing** *speech: express* | to-infinitive | care *not said here* |  | care's child |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V PP.recipient»: agent=Agent to child=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:** «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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- ← previous: [sentence 26](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/13/26/)
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