---
title: The men who had been sent to look at the passes over the mountains s… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: The men who had been sent to look at the passes over the mountains shook their heads. 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.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, How Napoleon Crossed the Alps., sentence 5

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The men who had been sent to look at the passes over the mountains shook their heads.

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**Who acts:** men · **What happens:** send, look, shake · **To what, where:** men, heads

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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.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg18442:784`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg18442:26:5
# text = The men who had been sent to look at the passes over the mountains shook their heads.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	men	man	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	nsubj	_	_
3	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	6	nsubj:pass	_	_
4	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
5	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	6	aux:pass	_	_
6	sent	send	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	2	acl:relcl	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	look	look	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	advcl	_	_
9	at	at	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	passes	pass	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obl	_	_
12	over	over	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	mountains	mountain	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	nmod	_	_
15	shook	shake	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
16	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	17	nmod:poss	_	_
17	heads	head	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	obj	_	_
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	15	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **send** | past · perfect · passive |  | the men |  |  |  |  | vn confine-92-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Theme |
| 2 | **look** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  | at the passes over the mountains | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent at pass=Theme |
| 3 | **shake** | past | the men | mountains's heads |  |  |  |  | vn shake-22.3-2 «NP V NP together»: agent=Agent head=Patient |

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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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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