---
title: It looked like a big black speck upon the water. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: It looked like a big black speck upon the water. Who acts: buoy. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Inchcape Rock., 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/pg18442/48/20/)

<!-- 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/) / [The Inchcape Rock.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/48/) / 20

# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Inchcape Rock., sentence 20

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
It looked like a big black speck upon the water.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** buoy · **What happens:** look

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (buoy), 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:pg18442:48:20
# text = It looked like a big black speck upon the water.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	looked	look	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	like	like	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
5	big	big	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
6	black	black	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	speck	speck	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
8	upon	upon	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **look** | past | buoy |  |  |  |  | like a big black speck upon the water | vn stimulus\_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus |

<!-- .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/pg18442/48/19/)
- next →: [sentence 21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/48/21/)
- ↑ back to [The Inchcape Rock.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/48/)