---
title: How could a handful of men hope to stand against so great a host? — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: How could a handful of men hope to stand against so great a host? Who acts: handful. 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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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Brave Three Hundred., sentence 13

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How could a handful of men hope to stand against so great a host?

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**Who acts:** handful · **What happens:** hope, stand · **To what, where:** host, great

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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 (handful), 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:pg18442:39:13
# text = How could a handful of men hope to stand against so great a host?
1	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	7	advmod	_	_
2	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	handful	handful	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nsubj	_	_
5	of	of	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	men	man	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	nmod	_	_
7	hope	hope	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	stand	stand	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	xcomp	_	_
10	against	against	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	so	so	ADV	RB	_	12	advmod	_	_
12	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	9	obl	_	_
13	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
14	host	host	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hope** | could | a handful of men |  |  |  |  |  | vn long-32.2 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 2 | **stand** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | a handful of men *not said here* | a host |  | great |  |  | vn put\_spatial-9.2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent host=Theme against great=Destination |

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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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