---
title: We must at least try to save them." — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: We must at least try to save them." Who acts: We. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Grace Darling., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Grace Darling., sentence 19

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We must at least try to save them."

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**Who acts:** We · **What happens:** try, save · **To what, where:** least, men

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Grace Darling.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (We), 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:pg18442:22:19
# text = We must at least try to save them."
1	We	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
2	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
3	at	at	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	least	least	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	5	obl	_	_
5	try	try	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	save	save	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	xcomp	_	_
8	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **try** | must | We |  |  | least |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **save** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | We *not said here* | men *= man* |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=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 18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/22/18/)
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- ↑ back to [Grace Darling.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/22/)