---
title: The lines were broken. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: The lines were broken. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Arnold Winkelried., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Arnold Winkelried., sentence 32

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The lines were broken.

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**What happens:** break · **To what, where:** lines

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Arnold Winkelried.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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:pg18442:24:32
# text = The lines were broken.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	lines	line	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nsubj:pass	_	_
3	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux:pass	_	_
4	broken	break	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **break** | past · passive |  | the lines |  |  |  |  | vn hurt-40.8.3-1-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Patient |

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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 31](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/24/31/)
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- ↑ back to [Arnold Winkelried.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/24/)