---
title: What if some great wrong should be done before it came? — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: What if some great wrong should be done before it came? Who acts: child. 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 31

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What if some great wrong should be done before it came?

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**Who acts:** child · **What happens:** do, come · **To what, where:** great wrong

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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 (child), 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:pg18442:25:31
# text = What if some great wrong should be done before it came?
1	What	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	0	root	_	_
2	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
3	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	5	det	_	_
4	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	wrong	wrong	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj:pass	_	_
6	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
7	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	aux:pass	_	_
8	done	do	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	1	acl:relcl	_	_
9	before	before	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
10	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	came	come	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **do** | should · passive |  | some great wrong |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Eventuality |
| 2 | **come** | past | child |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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 30](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/25/30/)
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