---
title: The wist-ful look in the poor man's face spoke plainer than words. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: The wist-ful look in the poor man's face spoke plainer than words. Who acts: ful look. 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/pg18442/17/15/)

<!-- 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/) / 15

# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Sir Philip Sidney., sentence 15

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The wist-ful look in the poor man's face spoke plainer than words.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** ful look · **What happens:** speak · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .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: who acts (ful look), 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:pg18442:17:15
# text = The wist-ful look in the poor man's face spoke plainer than words.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
2	wist	wist	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	ful	ful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	look	look	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
6	in	in	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod:poss	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	's	's	PART	POS	_	9	case	_	_
11	face	face	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	_
12	spoke	speak	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	plainer	plain	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	12	xcomp	_	_
14	than	than	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	words	word	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **speak** *speech: other* | past | the ful look in the poor man's face |  |  |  |  | plain *property* | vn talk-37.5 «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 14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/17/14/)
- next →: [sentence 16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/17/16/)
- ↑ back to [Sir Philip Sidney.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/17/)