---
title: So the abbot caused a buoy to be fastened to the rock. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: So the abbot caused a buoy to be fastened to the rock. Who acts: abbot. 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 6

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So the abbot caused a buoy to be fastened to the rock.

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**Who acts:** abbot · **What happens:** cause, fasten · **To what, where:** buoy

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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 (abbot), 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:pg18442:48:6
# text = So the abbot caused a buoy to be fastened to the rock.
1	So	so	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	abbot	abbot	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
4	caused	cause	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	buoy	buoy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	obj	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
8	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	9	aux:pass	_	_
9	fastened	fasten	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	6	acl	_	_
10	to	to	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
12	rock	rock	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **cause** | past | the abbot | a buoy |  |  |  |  | vn engender-27.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Precondition buoy=Patient |
| 2 | **fasten** | to-infinitive · passive | the abbot *not said here* | a buoy *not said here* |  |  |  | to the rock | vn tape-22.4 «NP V ADV-Middle PP»: to rock=Co-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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