---
title: After a while they went back to England; and whether the mother made… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: After a while they went back to England; and whether the mother made up any more songs about the Black Douglas I cannot tell. Who acts: Women, mother, I. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Black Douglas., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/13/36/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Fifty Famous Stories Retold](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/) / [The Black Douglas.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/13/) / 36

# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Black Douglas., sentence 36

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
After a while they went back to England; and whether the mother made up any more songs about the Black Douglas I cannot tell.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** Women, mother, I · **What happens:** go back, make up, not tell · **To what, where:** England, more songs · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (Women, mother, I), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg18442:13:36
# text = After a while they went back to England; and whether the mother made up any more songs about the Black Douglas I cannot tell.
1	After	after	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	while	while	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
4	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	back	back	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
7	to	to	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	England	England	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	26	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	26	cc	_	_
11	whether	whether	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	mother	mother	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	26	advcl	_	_
14	made	make	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	13	acl	_	_
15	up	up	ADP	RP	_	14	compound:prt	_	_
16	any	any	ADV	RB	_	17	advmod	_	_
17	more	more	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	18	amod	_	_
18	songs	song	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	obj	_	_
19	about	about	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
20	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
21	Black	Black	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	22	compound	_	_
22	Douglas	Douglas	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	18	nmod	_	_
23	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	26	nsubj	_	_
24	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	26	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
25	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	26	advmod	_	_
26	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
27	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go back** | past | Women *= woman* |  | England |  | while |  | vn convert-26.6.2 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Patient to england=Result |
| 2 | **make up** | participle | the mother *not said here* | more songs |  |  |  | about the Black Douglas | vn comprise-107.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme song=Pivot |
| 3 | **not** **tell** *speech: assert* | can | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 35](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/13/35/)
- next →: [Three Men of Gotham., 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/14/1/)
- ↑ back to [The Black Douglas.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/13/)