---
title: Could any one save the poor, half-drowned men who were there? — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: Could any one save the poor, half-drowned men who were there? Who acts: one, poor drowned 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 7

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Could any one save the poor, half-drowned men who were there?

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**Who acts:** one, poor drowned men · **What happens:** save, drown, be · **To what, where:** poor drowned 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 (one, poor drowned 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:pg18442:22:7
# text = Could any one save the poor, half-drowned men who were there?
1	Could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
2	any	any	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	3	det	_	_
3	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	4	nsubj	_	_
4	save	save	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
6	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
8	half	half	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing|NumForm=Word|NumType=Frac	10	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	drowned	drown	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	11	amod	_	_
11	men	man	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obj	_	_
12	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	14	nsubj	_	_
13	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
14	there	there	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	11	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **save** | could | any one | the poor drowned men |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent man=Theme |
| 2 | **drown** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn poison-42.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is** | past | the poor drowned men |  |  |  |  | there *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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