---
title: Before he was halfway to the farther shore, a storm overtook him. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: Before he was halfway to the farther shore, a storm overtook him. Who acts: Caesar, storm. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Julius Caesar., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Julius Caesar., sentence 20

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Before he was halfway to the farther shore, a storm overtook him.

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**Who acts:** Caesar, storm · **What happens:** be, overtake · **To what, where:** Caesar

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Julius Caesar.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Caesar, storm), 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:pg18442:32:20
# text = Before he was halfway to the farther shore, a storm overtook him.
1	Before	before	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
2	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
4	halfway	halfway	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
5	to	to	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	farther	far	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	8	amod	_	_
8	shore	shore	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	storm	storm	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
12	overtook	overtake	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
13	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	12	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | Caesar |  |  |  |  | to the farther shore; halfway *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **overtake** | past | a storm | Caesar |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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