---
title: With his face still toward Porsena's men, he moved slowly back-ward… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: With his face still toward Porsena's men, he moved slowly back-ward till he stood on the river's bank. Who acts: Horatius. 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 25

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With his face still toward Porsena's men, he moved slowly back-ward till he stood on the river's bank.

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**Who acts:** Horatius · **What happens:** move, stand · **To what, where:** bank

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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 (Horatius), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Checked tree.** This sentence is in the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3 (`gutenberg:pg18442:964`): parsed by Mova, then checked and patched by a teacher model under UD validation gates — Mova annot: Rust (en) → Claude Opus (medium) patches; gates UD 2.18.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg18442:31:25
# text = With his face still toward Porsena's men, he moved slowly back-ward till he stood on the river's bank.
1	With	with	ADP	IN	_	3	case	_	_
2	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	3	nmod:poss	_	_
3	face	face	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	_
4	still	still	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
5	toward	toward	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
6	Porsena	Porsena	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	nmod:poss	_	_
7	's	's	PART	POS	_	6	case	_	_
8	men	man	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	nmod	_	_
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
10	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	moved	move	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	slowly	slowly	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
13	back	back	ADV	RB	_	15	advmod	_	_
14	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	13	punct	_	_
15	ward	ward	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
16	till	till	SCONJ	IN	_	18	mark	_	_
17	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	18	nsubj	_	_
18	stood	stand	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	advcl	_	_
19	on	on	ADP	IN	_	23	case	_	_
20	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
21	river	river	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	23	nmod:poss	_	_
22	's	's	PART	POS	_	21	case	_	_
23	bank	bank	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	obl	_	_
24	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **move** | past | Horatius |  |  |  |  | with Horatius's face toward Porsena's men; slowly, ward *property* | vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.theme V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **stand** | past | Horatius |  |  | the river's bank |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent on bank=Location |

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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:** the tales treebank of Mova corpus 0.3, Apache-2.0 OR MIT. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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