---
title: It was a bright morning in the old city of Rome many hundred years a… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: It was a bright morning in the old city of Rome many hundred years ago. Who acts: It. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Cornelia's Jewels., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Cornelia's Jewels., sentence 1

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It was a bright morning in the old city of Rome many hundred years ago.

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**Who acts:** It · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** bright morning, old city

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Cornelia's Jewels.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (It), 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:pg18442:29:1
# text = It was a bright morning in the old city of Rome many hundred years ago.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	bright	bright	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	morning	morning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
6	in	in	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
8	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	city	city	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nmod	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
11	Rome	Rome	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
12	many	many	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
13	hundred	hundred	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	14	nummod	_	_
14	years	year	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	nmod	_	_
15	ago	ago	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | It | a bright morning |  | the old city of many hundred years |  |  | 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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- ← previous: [The Story of Regulus., 40](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/28/40/)
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