---
title: On the bridge the Romans hewed away at the beams and posts. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: On the bridge the Romans hewed away at the beams and posts. Who acts: Romans. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Horatius At the Bridge., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Horatius At the Bridge., sentence 15

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On the bridge the Romans hewed away at the beams and posts.

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**Who acts:** Romans · **What happens:** hew away · **To what, where:** bridge

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Horatius At the Bridge.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Romans), 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:pg18442:31:15
# text = On the bridge the Romans hewed away at the beams and posts.
1	On	on	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	bridge	bridge	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	Romans	Roman	PROPN	NNPS	Number=Plur	6	nsubj	_	_
6	hewed	hew	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	away	away	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
8	at	at	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	beams	beam	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	obl	_	_
11	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
12	posts	post	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hew away** | past | the Romans |  |  | the bridge |  | at the beams and posts; away *property* | vn cut-21.1-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent at beam=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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