---
title: Now and then he stooped to pluck a violet, or a primrose, or a yello… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: Now and then he stooped to pluck a violet, or a primrose, or a yellow but-ter-cup. Who acts: king. 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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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Kingdoms., sentence 5

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Now and then he stooped to pluck a violet, or a primrose, or a yellow but-ter-cup.

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**Who acts:** king · **What happens:** stoop, pluck · **To what, where:** primrose, violet

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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 (king), 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:pg18442:43:5
# text = Now and then he stooped to pluck a violet, or a primrose, or a yellow but-ter-cup.
1	Now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	5	advmod	_	_
2	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
3	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	5	advmod	_	_
4	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	stooped	stoop	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	pluck	pluck	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	xcomp	_	_
8	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	9	det	_	_
9	violet	violet	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
11	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	primrose	primrose	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
15	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
16	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	17	det	_	_
17	yellow	yellow	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	parataxis	_	_
18	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	22	cc	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	18	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	ter	ter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	22	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	20	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	cup	cup	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stoop** | past | king | a primrose |  |  | now; then |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **pluck** | to-infinitive | king *not said here* | a violet |  |  |  |  | vn braid-41.2.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent violet=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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