---
title: There was once a little boy whose name was Richard Whit'ting-ton; bu… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: There was once a little boy whose name was Richard Whit'ting-ton; but everybody called him Dick. Who acts: little boy, name, everybody, Richard Whit'ting ton. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, I. the City., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, I. the City., sentence 1

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There was once a little boy whose name was Richard Whit'ting-ton; but everybody called him Dick.

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**Who acts:** little boy, name, everybody, Richard Whit'ting ton · **What happens:** be, call, name · **To what, where:** Richard Whit'ting ton, boy · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, I. the City.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (little boy, name, everybody, Richard Whit'ting ton), 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:pg18442:49:1
# text = There was once a little boy whose name was Richard Whit'ting-ton; but everybody called him Dick.
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	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	2	advmod	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	little	little	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	amod	_	_
6	boy	boy	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
7	whose	whose	PRON	WP$	Poss=Yes|PronType=Rel	8	nmod:poss	_	_
8	name	name	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
9	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
10	Richard	Richard	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	13	compound	_	_
11	Whit'ting	whit'ting	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	ton	ton	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	17	punct	_	_
15	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	17	cc	_	_
16	everybody	everybody	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Tot	17	nsubj	_	_
17	called	call	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
18	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	17	obj	_	_
19	Dick	Dick	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	17	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
20	.	.	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 little boy |  |  | there |  | once *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **is a** | past | Richard Whit'ting ton's name | Richard Whit'ting ton |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **call** | past | everybody |  | boy |  |  |  | vn initiate\_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent he=Recipient |
| 4 | **name** |  | Richard Whit'ting ton |  |  |  |  |  | nom name «communication transitive»: poss=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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