---
title: At that time there were no white people in this country of ours. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: At that time there were no white people in this country of ours. Who acts: white people. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Sir Humphrey Gilbert., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Sir Humphrey Gilbert., sentence 2

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At that time there were no white people in this country of ours.

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**Who acts:** white people · **What happens:** be

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Sir Humphrey Gilbert.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (white people), 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:pg18442:19:2
# text = At that time there were no white people in this country of ours.
1	At	at	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	3	det	_	_
3	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	_
4	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	5	expl	_	_
5	were	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	8	det	_	_
7	white	white	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	nsubj	_	_
9	in	in	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	11	det	_	_
11	country	country	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nmod	_	_
12	of	of	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	ours	our	PRON	PRP	Number=Plur|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	11	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | no white people in this country of ours |  |  | there | time |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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- ← previous: [sentence 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/19/1/)
- next →: [sentence 3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/19/3/)
- ↑ back to [Sir Humphrey Gilbert.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/19/)