---
title: In a few minutes they were ready. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: In a few minutes they were ready. Who acts: men. 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 21

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In a few minutes they were ready.

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**Who acts:** men · **What happens:** be

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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 (men), 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:pg18442:22:21
# text = In a few minutes they were ready.
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	few	few	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	minutes	minute	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obl	_	_
5	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
6	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
7	ready	ready	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | men *= man* |  |  |  | minute | ready *property* | tree rules |

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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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