---
title: There was a gur-gling sound as it sank out of sight. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: There was a gur-gling sound as it sank out of sight. Who acts: gling sound, sound. 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 30

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There was a gur-gling sound as it sank out of sight.

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**Who acts:** gling sound, sound · **What happens:** be, gl, sink · **To what, where:** sight

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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 (gling sound, sound), 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:pg18442:48:30
# text = There was a gur-gling sound as it sank out of sight.
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	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
4	gur	gur	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	gling	gl	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	7	amod	_	_
7	sound	sound	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
8	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
9	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj	_	_
10	sank	sink	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	advcl	_	_
11	out	out	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	of	of	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	sight	sight	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	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 gling sound |  |  | there |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **gl** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **sink** | past | sound |  |  | sight |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=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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