---
title: "Now, neighbors," he said, "can you tell how much meal is in my sack?" — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: "Now, neighbors," he said, "can you tell how much meal is in my sack?" Who acts: neighbors, you, much meal. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Three Men of Gotham., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/14/27/)

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Three Men of Gotham., sentence 27

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"Now, neighbors," he said, "can you tell how much meal is in my sack?"

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**Who acts:** neighbors, you, much meal · **What happens:** say, tell, be · **To what, where:** sack · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Three Men of Gotham.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (neighbors, you, much meal), 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:pg18442:14:27
# text = "Now, neighbors," he said, "can you tell how much meal is in my sack?"
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	4	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
4	neighbors	neighbor	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
7	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
12	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	ccomp	_	_
14	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	15	advmod	_	_
15	much	much	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	meal	meal	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	nsubj	_	_
17	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	20	cop	_	_
18	in	in	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
19	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	20	nmod:poss	_	_
20	sack	sack	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: ask* | past | neighbors |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **tell** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | can | you |  |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is** *in a quote* | present | much meal |  |  | my sack |  |  | 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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