---
title: There were so many of them that no man could count them. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: There were so many of them that no man could count them. Who acts: many, man. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Brave Three Hundred., 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/pg18442/39/12/)

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Brave Three Hundred., sentence 12

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There were so many of them that no man could count them.

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**Who acts:** many, man · **What happens:** be, count · **To what, where:** soldiers

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Brave Three Hundred.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (many, man), 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:pg18442:39:12
# text = There were so many of them that no man could count them.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	were	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	so	so	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	many	many	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	nsubj	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nmod	_	_
7	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
8	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	9	det	_	_
9	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
10	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	count	count	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	advcl	_	_
12	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | many of soldiers |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **count** | could | no man | soldiers *= soldier* |  |  |  |  | vn multiply-108 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=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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