---
title: He sat down in a dark corner, and cried himself to sleep. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: He sat down in a dark corner, and cried himself to sleep. Who acts: Dick. 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 19

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He sat down in a dark corner, and cried himself to sleep.

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**Who acts:** Dick · **What happens:** sit down, cry, sleep · **To what, where:** dark corner, Dick

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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 (Dick), 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:pg18442:49:19
# text = He sat down in a dark corner, and cried himself to sleep.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	down	down	ADP	RP	_	2	compound:prt	_	_
4	in	in	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	dark	dark	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	corner	corner	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	cried	cry	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
11	himself	himself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs|Reflex=Yes	10	obj	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
13	sleep	sleep	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sit down** | past | Dick |  |  | a dark corner |  |  | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent in corner=Location |
| 2 | **cry** *speech: express* | past | Dick *not said here* | Dick |  |  |  |  | vn manner\_speaking-37.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent himself=Topic |
| 3 | **sleep** | to-infinitive | Dick *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn snooze-40.4-1 «NP V»: 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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