---
title: Strong hands grasped the oars, and by and by all were safe in the li… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: Strong hands grasped the oars, and by and by all were safe in the lighthouse. Who acts: Strong hands, all. 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 31

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Strong hands grasped the oars, and by and by all were safe in the lighthouse.

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**Who acts:** Strong hands, all · **What happens:** grasp, be · **To what, where:** oars, lighthouse

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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 (Strong hands, all), 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:pg18442:22:31
# text = Strong hands grasped the oars, and by and by all were safe in the lighthouse.
1	Strong	strong	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	amod	_	_
2	hands	hand	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	grasped	grasp	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	oars	oar	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
8	by	by	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
10	by	by	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	13	nsubj	_	_
12	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
13	safe	safe	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	conj	_	_
14	in	in	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	lighthouse	lighthouse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **grasp** | past | Strong hands | the oars |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer oar=Stimulus |
| 2 | **is** | past | all |  |  | the lighthouse |  | safe *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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