---
title: Their axes rang, the chips flew fast; and soon it trembled, and was… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: Their axes rang, the chips flew fast; and soon it trembled, and was ready to fall. Who acts: axes, chips, army. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/31/16/)

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Horatius At the Bridge., sentence 16

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Their axes rang, the chips flew fast; and soon it trembled, and was ready to fall.

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**Who acts:** axes, chips, army · **What happens:** ring, fly, tremble, be, fall

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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 (axes, chips, army), 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:pg18442:31:16
# text = Their axes rang, the chips flew fast; and soon it trembled, and was ready to fall.
1	Their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	2	nmod:poss	_	_
2	axes	ax	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nsubj	_	_
3	rang	ring	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	chips	chip	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	nsubj	_	_
7	flew	fly	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
8	fast	fast	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	7	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	13	punct	_	_
10	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
11	soon	soon	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	13	advmod	_	_
12	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
13	trembled	tremble	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
16	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	17	cop	_	_
17	ready	ready	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	parataxis	_	_
18	to	to	PART	TO	_	19	mark	_	_
19	fall	fall	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	17	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ring** | past | posts's axes |  |  |  |  |  | vn sound\_emission-43.2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **fly** | past | the chips |  |  |  |  | fast *property* | vn spatial\_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **tremble** | past | army |  |  |  |  | soon *property* | vn modes\_of\_being\_with\_motion-47.3 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **is** | past |  |  |  |  |  | ready *property* | tree rules |
| 5 | **fall** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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