---
title: Maximilian sat down on a stone, and laughed at the thought of being… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: Maximilian sat down on a stone, and laughed at the thought of being a goose-herd. Who acts: Maximilian. 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.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Maximilian and the Goose Boy., sentence 56

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Maximilian sat down on a stone, and laughed at the thought of being a goose-herd.

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**Who acts:** Maximilian · **What happens:** sit down, laugh, be · **To what, where:** stone, thought

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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 (Maximilian), 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:pg18442:47:56
# text = Maximilian sat down on a stone, and laughed at the thought of being a goose-herd.
1	Maximilian	Maximilian	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
2	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	down	down	ADP	RP	_	2	compound:prt	_	_
4	on	on	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	stone	stone	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	laughed	laugh	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
10	at	at	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	thought	thought	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	_
13	of	of	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
14	being	be	AUX	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	18	cop	_	_
15	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
16	goose	goose	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	18	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	16	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	herd	herd	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sit down** | past | Maximilian |  |  | a stone |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent on stone=Location |
| 2 | **laugh** | past | Maximilian *not said here* |  |  | the thought |  |  | vn nonverbal\_expression-40.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  | of a goose herd | 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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