---
title: People laughed at the thought of an army of sixty thousand men cross… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: People laughed at the thought of an army of sixty thousand men crossing the Alps where there was no road. Who acts: People, thousand 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 9

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People laughed at the thought of an army of sixty thousand men crossing the Alps where there was no road.

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**Who acts:** People, thousand men · **What happens:** laugh, cross, think · **To what, where:** thought, Alps, army

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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 (People, thousand men), 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:pg18442:26:9
# text = People laughed at the thought of an army of sixty thousand men crossing the Alps where there was no road.
1	People	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	nsubj	_	_
2	laughed	laugh	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	at	at	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	thought	thought	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
6	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	army	army	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	_
9	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
10	sixty	sixty	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	11	compound	_	_
11	thousand	thousand	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	12	nummod	_	_
12	men	man	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	nmod	_	_
13	crossing	cross	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	12	acl	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	Alps	Alp	PROPN	NNPS	Number=Plur	13	obj	_	_
16	where	where	ADV	WRB	PronType=Rel	18	advmod	_	_
17	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	18	expl	_	_
18	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	acl:relcl	_	_
19	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	20	det	_	_
20	road	road	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **laugh** | past | People |  |  | the thought of a army of thousand men |  |  | vn nonverbal\_expression-40.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **cross** | gerund | thousand men *not said here* | the Alps |  |  |  |  | vn crane-40.3.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent alp=Patient |
| 3 | **think** |  |  | a army of thousand men |  |  |  |  | nom thought «cognition transitive»: of=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:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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