---
title: But there was one man, named William Tell, who would not do this. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: But there was one man, named William Tell, who would not do this. Who acts: one man. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Story of William Tell., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Story of William Tell., sentence 4

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But there was one man, named William Tell, who would not do this.

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**Who acts:** one man · **What happens:** be, name, tell, not do · **To what, where:** one man, this · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Story of William Tell.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (one man), 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:pg18442:23:4
# text = But there was one man, named William Tell, who would not do this.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	3	expl	_	_
3	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	5	nummod	_	_
5	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
7	named	name	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	5	acl	_	_
8	William	William	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	7	xcomp	_	_
9	Tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
11	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	14	nsubj	_	_
12	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
13	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	14	advmod	_	_
14	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	ccomp	_	_
15	this	this	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	14	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | one man |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **name** | participle |  | one man *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn appoint-29.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **tell** *speech: assert* | infinitive | one man *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 4 | **not** **do** | would |  | this |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent this=Eventuality |

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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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