---
title: At last he chanced to sail back toward the place from which he had s… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: At last he chanced to sail back toward the place from which he had started. Who acts: Rover. 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 35

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At last he chanced to sail back toward the place from which he had started.

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**Who acts:** Rover · **What happens:** chance, sail back, start · **To what, where:** last, place

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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 (Rover), 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:pg18442:48:35
# text = At last he chanced to sail back toward the place from which he had started.
1	At	at	ADP	IN	_	2	case	_	_
2	last	last	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obl	_	_
3	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	chanced	chance	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	sail	sail	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	xcomp	_	_
7	back	back	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
8	toward	toward	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	place	place	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	_
11	from	from	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	15	obl	_	_
13	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
14	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
15	started	start	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	10	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **chance** | past | Rover |  |  | last |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **sail back** | to-infinitive | Rover *not said here* |  |  | the place |  |  | vn nonvehicle-51.4.2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent toward place=Trajectory |
| 3 | **start** | past · perfect | Rover |  |  | the place |  |  | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality |

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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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