---
title: In Rome there was once a poor slave whose name was An'dro-clus. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: In Rome there was once a poor slave whose name was An'dro-clus. Who acts: poor slave, name, An'dro clus. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Androclus and the Lion., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Androclus and the Lion., sentence 1

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In Rome there was once a poor slave whose name was An'dro-clus.

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**Who acts:** poor slave, name, An'dro clus · **What happens:** be, name · **To what, where:** Rome, An'dro clus

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Androclus and the Lion.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (poor slave, name, An'dro clus), 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:pg18442:30:1
# text = In Rome there was once a poor slave whose name was An'dro-clus.
1	In	in	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	Rome	Rome	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
3	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	4	expl	_	_
4	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	8	advmod	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	poor	poor	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	slave	slave	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
9	whose	whose	PRON	WP$	Poss=Yes|PronType=Rel	10	nmod:poss	_	_
10	name	name	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	nsubj	_	_
11	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	14	cop	_	_
12	An'dro	An'dro	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	14	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	clus	clus	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | a poor slave |  |  | Rome; there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in rome=Location |
| 2 | **is a** | past | An'dro clus's name | An'dro clus |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **name** |  | An'dro clus |  |  |  |  |  | nom name «communication transitive»: poss=agent |

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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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