---
title: He was always busy from morning till night, and he was always singin… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: He was always busy from morning till night, and he was always singing as merrily as any lark. Who acts: England. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Miller of the Dee., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Miller of the Dee., sentence 2

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He was always busy from morning till night, and he was always singing as merrily as any lark.

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**Who acts:** England · **What happens:** be, sing

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Miller of the Dee.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (England), 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:pg18442:16:2
# text = He was always busy from morning till night, and he was always singing as merrily as any lark.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	always	always	ADV	RB	PronType=Tot	4	advmod	_	_
4	busy	busy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
5	from	from	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	morning	morning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
7	till	till	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
11	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
12	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
13	always	always	ADV	RB	PronType=Tot	14	advmod	_	_
14	singing	sing	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	4	advcl	_	_
15	as	as	ADV	RB	_	16	advmod	_	_
16	merrily	merrily	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	_
17	as	as	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
18	any	any	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	19	det	_	_
19	lark	lark	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | England |  |  |  | morning; night | always, busy *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **sing** *speech: express* | past · progressive | England |  |  |  |  | always, merrily *property* | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP.location V PP.theme»: agent=Location |

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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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