---
title: There was once a kind man whose name was Oliver Gold-smith. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: There was once a kind man whose name was Oliver Gold-smith. Who acts: kind man, name, Oliver Gold smith. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Doctor Goldsmith., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Doctor Goldsmith., sentence 1

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There was once a kind man whose name was Oliver Gold-smith.

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**Who acts:** kind man, name, Oliver Gold smith · **What happens:** be, name · **To what, where:** Oliver Gold smith

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Doctor Goldsmith.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (kind man, name, Oliver Gold smith), 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:pg18442:42:1
# text = There was once a kind man whose name was Oliver Gold-smith.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	2	advmod	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	kind	kind	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
7	whose	whose	PRON	WP$	Poss=Yes|PronType=Rel	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	name	name	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
9	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
10	Oliver	Oliver	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	compound	_	_
11	Gold	gold	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	smith	smith	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	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 | a kind man |  |  | there |  | once *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **is a** | past | Oliver Gold smith's name | Oliver Gold smith |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **name** |  | Oliver Gold smith |  |  |  |  |  | nom name «communication transitive»: poss=agent |

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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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