---
title: If the fog would only clear away!" he said. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: If the fog would only clear away!" he said. Who acts: fog. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/48/42/)

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Inchcape Rock., sentence 42

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If the fog would only clear away!" he said.

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**Who acts:** fog · **What happens:** clear away, say · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (fog), 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:pg18442:48:42
# text = If the fog would only clear away!" he said.
1	If	if	SCONJ	IN	_	6	mark	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	fog	fog	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
4	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
5	only	only	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	_
6	clear	clear	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	advcl	_	_
7	away	away	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	6	punct	_	_
10	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **clear away** *a condition, not said to happen* | would | the fog |  |  |  |  | away *property* | vn clear-10.3-1 «NP.Source V»: agent=Source |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | past | fog |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |

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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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- ← previous: [sentence 41](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/48/41/)
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- ↑ back to [The Inchcape Rock.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/48/)