---
title: The city had never been in so great danger. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: The city had never been in so great danger. Who acts: city. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Horatius At the Bridge., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/31/3/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Fifty Famous Stories Retold](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/) / [Horatius At the Bridge.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/31/) / 3

# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Horatius At the Bridge., sentence 3

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The city had never been in so great danger.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** city · **What happens:** have, not be · **To what, where:** great danger

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (city), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg18442:31:3
# text = The city had never been in so great danger.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	city	city	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	never	never	ADV	RB	PronType=Neg	9	advmod	_	_
5	been	be	AUX	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	9	cop	_	_
6	in	in	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
7	so	so	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
8	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	amod	_	_
9	danger	danger	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **have** | past | the city |  |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **not** **is** | participle |  |  |  | great danger |  |  | tree rules |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/31/2/)
- next →: [sentence 4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/31/4/)
- ↑ back to [Horatius At the Bridge.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/31/)