---
title: Goldsmith gave her a little paper box that was very heavy. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: Goldsmith gave her a little paper box that was very heavy. Who acts: Goldsmith, little paper box. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/42/14/)

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Doctor Goldsmith., sentence 14

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Goldsmith gave her a little paper box that was very heavy.

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**Who acts:** Goldsmith, little paper box · **What happens:** give, be · **To what, where:** little paper box, woman

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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 (Goldsmith, little paper box), 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:pg18442:42:14
# text = Goldsmith gave her a little paper box that was very heavy.
1	Goldsmith	Goldsmith	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
2	gave	give	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	her	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	iobj	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
5	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
6	paper	paper	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	compound	_	_
7	box	box	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
8	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	11	nsubj	_	_
9	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
10	very	very	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
11	heavy	heavy	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **give** | past | Goldsmith | a little paper box | woman |  |  |  | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent she=Recipient box=Theme |
| 2 | **is** | past | a little paper box |  |  |  |  | heavy *property* | tree rules |

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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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