---
title: The ship stood almost still; there was hardly a breath of air to fil… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: The ship stood almost still; there was hardly a breath of air to fill her sails. Who acts: ship. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Inchcape Rock., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Inchcape Rock., sentence 16

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The ship stood almost still; there was hardly a breath of air to fill her sails.

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**Who acts:** ship · **What happens:** stand, be, fill · **To what, where:** breath, sails

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Inchcape Rock.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (ship), 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:pg18442:48:16
# text = The ship stood almost still; there was hardly a breath of air to fill her sails.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	ship	ship	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	stood	stand	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	almost	almost	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	still	still	ADV	RB	_	3	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	8	expl	_	_
8	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	_
9	hardly	hardly	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	breath	breath	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
12	of	of	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	air	air	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nmod	_	_
14	to	to	PART	TO	_	15	mark	_	_
15	fill	fill	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	advcl	_	_
16	her	her	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	17	nmod:poss	_	_
17	sails	sail	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
18	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **stand** | past | the ship | a breath of air |  |  | still |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **be** | past | the ship *not said here* |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **fill** | to-infinitive | the ship *not said here* | wind's sails |  |  |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent sail=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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