---
title: It is a very old town, and is built half-way up the side of a steep… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: It is a very old town, and is built half-way up the side of a steep hill. Who acts: tri, old town. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Bell of Atri., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Bell of Atri., sentence 2

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It is a very old town, and is built half-way up the side of a steep hill.

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**Who acts:** tri, old town · **What happens:** be, build · **To what, where:** old town, half way

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Bell of Atri.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (tri, old town), 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:pg18442:25:2
# text = It is a very old town, and is built half-way up the side of a steep hill.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
2	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
4	very	very	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	town	town	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
9	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux:pass	_	_
10	built	build	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	6	acl	_	_
11	half	half	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing|NumForm=Word|NumType=Frac	13	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	_
14	up	up	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
15	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
16	side	side	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
17	of	of	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
18	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
19	steep	steep	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	20	amod	_	_
20	hill	hill	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | present | tri | a old town |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **build** | present · passive | a old town *not said here* | half way |  |  |  | up the side of a steep hill | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: way=Product |

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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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