---
title: Then one of them said, "It may be possible, but"-- — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: Then one of them said, "It may be possible, but"-- Who acts: one, ble. 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 6

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Then one of them said, "It may be possible, but"--

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**Who acts:** one, ble · **What happens:** say, be · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (one, ble), 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:pg18442:26:6
# text = Then one of them said, "It may be possible, but"--
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	5	advmod	_	_
2	one	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	5	nsubj	_	_
3	of	of	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nmod	_	_
5	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
7	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
9	may	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
10	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	cop	_	_
11	possible	possible	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	14	punct	_	_
13	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | one of mountains |  |  |  | then |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is** *in a quote* | may | ble |  |  |  |  | possible *property* | tree rules |

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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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