---
title: In four days they were marching on the plains of Italy. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: In four days they were marching on the plains of Italy. Who acts: men. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, How Napoleon Crossed the Alps., 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/pg18442/26/15/)

<!-- 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/) / [How Napoleon Crossed the Alps.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/26/) / 15

# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, How Napoleon Crossed the Alps., sentence 15

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
In four days they were marching on the plains of Italy.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** men · **What happens:** march · **To what, where:** plains

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, How Napoleon Crossed the Alps.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (men), 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:pg18442:26:15
# text = In four days they were marching on the plains of Italy.
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	four	four	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	3	nummod	_	_
3	days	day	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obl	_	_
4	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
5	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
6	marching	march	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
7	on	on	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	plains	plain	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obl	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	Italy	Italy	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **march** | past · progressive | men *= man* |  |  | the plains of Italy | day |  | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme on plain=Trajectory |

<!-- .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 14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/26/14/)
- next →: [sentence 16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/26/16/)
- ↑ back to [How Napoleon Crossed the Alps.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/26/)