---
title: It was a very pretty bell, and was, pol-ished until it looked almost… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: It was a very pretty bell, and was, pol-ished until it looked almost as bright and yellow as the sun. 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.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/25/9/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Fifty Famous Stories Retold](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/) / [The Bell of Atri.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/25/) / 9

# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Bell of Atri., sentence 9

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
It was a very pretty bell, and was, pol-ished until it looked almost as bright and yellow as the sun.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** child · **What happens:** be, look · **To what, where:** pretty bell

<!-- .vabout -->
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.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg18442:25:9
# text = It was a very pretty bell, and was, pol-ished until it looked almost as bright and yellow as the sun.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
4	very	very	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	pretty	pretty	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	bell	bell	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
9	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
11	pol	pol	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	ished	ish	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	6	conj	_	_
14	until	until	SCONJ	IN	_	16	mark	_	_
15	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	nsubj	_	_
16	looked	look	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	advcl	_	_
17	almost	almost	ADV	RB	_	19	advmod	_	_
18	as	as	ADP	IN	_	19	case	_	_
19	bright	bright	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	xcomp	_	_
20	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	21	cc	_	_
21	yellow	yellow	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	19	conj	_	_
22	as	as	ADP	IN	_	24	case	_	_
23	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	24	det	_	_
24	sun.	sun.	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | child | a pretty bell |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** | past | child *not said here* |  |  |  |  | ish *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **look** | past | child |  |  |  |  | as the sun.; bright *property* | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V ADJ»: agent=Stimulus |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/25/8/)
- next →: [sentence 10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/25/10/)
- ↑ back to [The Bell of Atri.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/25/)