---
title: They had hardly reached the other side when there was a crashing of… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: They had hardly reached the other side when there was a crashing of beams and timbers. Who acts: roads, crashing. 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 22

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They had hardly reached the other side when there was a crashing of beams and timbers.

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**Who acts:** roads, crashing · **What happens:** reach, be · **To what, where:** other side

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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 (roads, crashing), 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:pg18442:31:22
# text = They had hardly reached the other side when there was a crashing of beams and timbers.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	hardly	hardly	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	reached	reach	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	other	other	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	side	side	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
8	when	when	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	10	advmod	_	_
9	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	10	expl	_	_
10	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	advcl	_	_
11	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	crashing	crashing	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
13	of	of	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	beams	beam	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	nmod	_	_
15	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
16	timbers	timber	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	14	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **reach** | past · perfect | roads *= road* | the other side |  |  |  | hardly *property* | vn body\_motion-49.2-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Agent side=Theme |
| 2 | **be** | past | a crashing of beams and timbers |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «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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