---
title: It was a very lonely place, and no one could get to it except by a b… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: It was a very lonely place, and no one could get to it except by a boat. Who acts: land, one. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, King Alfred and the Beggar., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, King Alfred and the Beggar., sentence 3

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It was a very lonely place, and no one could get to it except by a boat.

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**Who acts:** land, one · **What happens:** be, get · **To what, where:** lonely place, land

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, King Alfred and the Beggar.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (land, one), 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:pg18442:4:3
# text = It was a very lonely place, and no one could get to it except by a boat.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
4	very	very	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	lonely	lonely	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	place	place	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
9	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	10	det	_	_
10	one	one	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nsubj	_	_
11	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
12	get	get	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	parataxis	_	_
13	to	to	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	obl	_	_
15	except	except	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
16	by	by	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	boat	boat	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | land | a lonely place |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **get** | could | no one |  | land |  |  | except a boat | vn convert-26.6.2 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Patient to it=Result |

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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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