---
title: A cruel battle was being fought. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: A cruel battle was being fought. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Sir Philip Sidney., 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/pg18442/17/1/)

<!-- 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/) / [Sir Philip Sidney.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/17/) / 1

# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Sir Philip Sidney., sentence 1

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
A cruel battle was being fought.

<!-- .vintro -->
**What happens:** fight · **To what, where:** cruel battle

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Sir Philip Sidney.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg18442:17:1
# text = A cruel battle was being fought.
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	cruel	cruel	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	battle	battle	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj:pass	_	_
4	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux:pass	_	_
5	being	be	AUX	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	6	aux:pass	_	_
6	fought	fight	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fight** | past · passive |  | a cruel battle |  |  |  |  | vn battle-36.4-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Co-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: [The Miller of the Dee., 27](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/16/27/)
- next →: [sentence 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/17/2/)
- ↑ back to [Sir Philip Sidney.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/17/)