---
title: They snatched spears and shields from their foes. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: They snatched spears and shields from their foes. Who acts: friends. 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 35

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They snatched spears and shields from their foes.

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**Who acts:** friends · **What happens:** snatch · **To what, where:** spears, foes

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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: who acts (friends), 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:pg18442:24:35
# text = They snatched spears and shields from their foes.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	snatched	snatch	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	spears	spear	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	_
4	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	5	cc	_	_
5	shields	shield	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	conj	_	_
6	from	from	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	foes	foe	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **snatch** | past | friends *= friend* | spears and shields |  | friends's foes |  |  | vn obtain-13.5.2 «NP V NP PP.source»: agent=Agent spear=Theme from foe=Source |

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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 34](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/24/34/)
- next →: [sentence 36](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/24/36/)
- ↑ back to [Arnold Winkelried.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/24/)