---
title: Twenty thousand Persian soldiers had fallen before that handful of m… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: Twenty thousand Persian soldiers had fallen before that handful of men. Who acts: thousand Persian soldiers. 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 28

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Twenty thousand Persian soldiers had fallen before that handful of men.

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**Who acts:** thousand Persian soldiers · **What happens:** fall · **To what, where:** handful

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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 (thousand Persian soldiers), 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:pg18442:39:28
# text = Twenty thousand Persian soldiers had fallen before that handful of men.
1	Twenty	twenty	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	2	compound	_	_
2	thousand	thousand	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	4	nummod	_	_
3	Persian	persian	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	4	amod	_	_
4	soldiers	soldier	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nsubj	_	_
5	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
6	fallen	fall	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
7	before	before	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	that	that	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	9	det	_	_
9	handful	handful	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	men	man	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fall** | past · perfect | thousand Persian soldiers |  |  | that handful of men |  |  | vn occur-48.3 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme before handful=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:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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