---
title: "I wish I could go to work!" said Dick. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: "I wish I could go to work!" said Dick. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/49/24/)

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, I. the City., sentence 24

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"I wish I could go to work!" said Dick.

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**Who acts:** Dick · **What happens:** wish, go, say · **To what, where:** work · **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 (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:pg18442:49:24
# text = "I wish I could go to work!" said Dick.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
3	wish	wish	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	ccomp	_	_
4	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
5	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
6	go	go	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	ccomp	_	_
7	to	to	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
8	work	work	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	Dick	Dick	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wish** *in a quote* | present | Dick |  |  |  |  |  | vn wish-62 «NP V for NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 2 | **go** *in a quote* | could | Dick |  |  | work |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme to work=Initial\_Location |
| 3 | **say** *speech: express* | past | Dick |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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