---
title: But they were a little afraid, and all kept still. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: But they were a little afraid, and all kept still. Who acts: kingdom. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Kingdoms., 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/pg18442/43/40/)

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Kingdoms., sentence 40

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But they were a little afraid, and all kept still.

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**Who acts:** kingdom · **What happens:** be, keep · **To what, where:** all

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Kingdoms.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (kingdom), 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:pg18442:43:40
# text = But they were a little afraid, and all kept still.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	6	cc	_	_
2	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
3	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	obl:unmarked	_	_
6	afraid	afraid	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
9	all	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	10	nsubj:pass	_	_
10	kept	keep	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	6	conj	_	_
11	still	still	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	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 | **is** | past | kingdom |  |  |  |  | a little *obl:unmarked*; afraid *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **keep** | participle · passive |  | all |  |  | still |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: subject=Theme |

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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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- ← previous: [sentence 39](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/43/39/)
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- ↑ back to [The Kingdoms.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/43/)