---
title: Now, in the town where Dick lived, the people liked to talk about Lo… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: Now, in the town where Dick lived, the people liked to talk about London. Who acts: Dick, people. 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 5

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Now, in the town where Dick lived, the people liked to talk about London.

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**Who acts:** Dick, people · **What happens:** live, like, talk · **To what, where:** town

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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, people), 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:pg18442:49:5
# text = Now, in the town where Dick lived, the people liked to talk about London.
1	Now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	8	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
3	in	in	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	town	town	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	obl	_	_
6	where	where	ADV	WRB	PronType=Rel	8	advmod	_	_
7	Dick	Dick	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
8	lived	live	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	12	nsubj	_	_
12	liked	like	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	conj	_	_
13	to	to	PART	TO	_	14	mark	_	_
14	talk	talk	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	xcomp	_	_
15	about	about	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
16	London	London	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	14	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	8	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **live** | past | Dick |  |  | the town | now |  | vn lodge-46 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in town=Location |
| 2 | **like** | past | the people |  |  |  |  |  | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 3 | **talk** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | the people *not said here* |  |  |  |  | about London | vn talk-37.5 «NP V PP.topic»: agent=Agent about london=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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