---
title: "But why do you carry that door?" asked the sheriff. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: "But why do you carry that door?" asked the sheriff. Who acts: you, sheriff. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Other Wise 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/pg18442/15/54/)

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Other Wise Men of Gotham., sentence 54

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"But why do you carry that door?" asked the sheriff.

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**Who acts:** you, sheriff · **What happens:** carry, ask · **To what, where:** door · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Other Wise 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 (you, sheriff), 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:pg18442:15:54
# text = "But why do you carry that door?" asked the sheriff.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
3	why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	6	advmod	_	_
4	do	do	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=2|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
5	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Person=2|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	carry	carry	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	_
7	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	8	det	_	_
8	door	door	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
11	asked	ask	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	sheriff	sheriff	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **carry** *in a quote* | present · do-support | you | that door |  |  |  |  | vn carry-11.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent door=Theme |
| 2 | **ask** *speech: ask* | past | the sheriff |  |  |  |  |  | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=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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