---
title: The man had not had work for a long time. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: The man had not had work for a long time. Who acts: man. 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 10

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The man had not had work for a long time.

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**Who acts:** man · **What happens:** not have · **To what, where:** work

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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 (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:pg18442:42:10
# text = The man had not had work for a long time.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
3	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
4	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	5	advmod	_	_
5	had	have	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
6	work	work	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
7	for	for	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
9	long	long	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **have** | past · perfect | the man | work |  |  | time |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent work=Patient |

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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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