---
title: He was tending a large flock of geese that were picking the short gr… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: He was tending a large flock of geese that were picking the short grass, and wading in a shallow brook. Who acts: king, geese. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Maximilian and the Goose Boy., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/47/20/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Fifty Famous Stories Retold](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/) / [Maximilian and the Goose Boy.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/47/) / 20

# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Maximilian and the Goose Boy., sentence 20

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
He was tending a large flock of geese that were picking the short grass, and wading in a shallow brook.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** king, geese · **What happens:** tend, pick, wade · **To what, where:** large flock, short grass, shallow brook

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Maximilian and the Goose Boy.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (king, geese), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg18442:47:20
# text = He was tending a large flock of geese that were picking the short grass, and wading in a shallow brook.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	tending	tend	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	large	large	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	flock	flock	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obj	_	_
7	of	of	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	geese	goose	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nmod	_	_
9	that	that	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	11	nsubj	_	_
10	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	picking	pick	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	8	acl:relcl	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	short	short	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	grass	grass	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	17	punct	_	_
16	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
17	wading	wade	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	3	conj	_	_
18	in	in	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
19	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	21	det	_	_
20	shallow	shallow	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	21	amod	_	_
21	brook	brook	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	17	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tend** | past · progressive | king | a large flock of geese |  |  |  |  | vn caring-75.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent flock=Theme |
| 2 | **pick** | past · progressive | geese | the short grass |  |  |  |  | vn chew-39.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent grass=Patient |
| 3 | **wade** | gerund | king *not said here* |  |  | a shallow brook |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in brook=Trajectory |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/47/19/)
- next →: [sentence 21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/47/21/)
- ↑ back to [Maximilian and the Goose Boy.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/47/)