---
title: It was growing dark, and in every street there was only dirt instead… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: It was growing dark, and in every street there was only dirt instead of gold. Who acts: gold. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, I. the City., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/49/18/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Fifty Famous Stories Retold](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/) / [I. the City.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/49/) / 18

# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, I. the City., sentence 18

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
It was growing dark, and in every street there was only dirt instead of gold.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** gold · **What happens:** grow, be · **To what, where:** dirt

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (gold), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg18442:49:18
# text = It was growing dark, and in every street there was only dirt instead of gold.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	growing	grow	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
4	dark	dark	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
6	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
7	in	in	ADP	IN	_	9	case	_	_
8	every	every	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	9	det	_	_
9	street	street	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl	_	_
10	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	11	expl	_	_
11	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
12	only	only	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
13	dirt	dirt	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	_
14	instead	instead	ADV	RB	ExtPos=ADP	16	case	_	_
15	of	of	ADP	IN	_	14	fixed	_	_
16	gold	gold	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **grow** | past · progressive | gold |  |  |  |  | dark *property* | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **is a** | past |  | dirt |  |  |  | instead gold | tree rules |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/49/17/)
- next →: [sentence 19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/49/19/)
- ↑ back to [I. the City.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/49/)