---
title: There was once a rich old man who was called the Bar-me-cide. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: There was once a rich old man who was called the Bar-me-cide. Who acts: rich old man. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Barmecide Feast., 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/pg18442/44/1/)

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Barmecide Feast., sentence 1

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There was once a rich old man who was called the Bar-me-cide.

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**Who acts:** rich old man · **What happens:** be, call · **To what, where:** rich old man · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Barmecide Feast.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (rich old 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:pg18442:44:1
# text = There was once a rich old man who was called the Bar-me-cide.
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	7	det	_	_
5	rich	rich	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
6	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
8	who	who	PRON	WP	PronType=Rel	10	nsubj:pass	_	_
9	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux:pass	_	_
10	called	call	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	7	acl:relcl	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
12	Bar	Bar	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	16	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	12	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	cide	cide	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	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 rich old man |  |  | there |  | once *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **call** | past · passive |  | a rich old man |  |  |  |  | vn initiate\_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: subject=Recipient |

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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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