---
title: Dick listened to these stories, and wished that he could go to London. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: Dick listened to these stories, and wished that he could go to London. 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/pg18442/49/8/)

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, I. the City., sentence 8

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Dick listened to these stories, and wished that he could go to London.

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**Who acts:** Dick · **What happens:** listen, wish, go · **To what, where:** London · **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:pg18442:49:8
# text = Dick listened to these stories, and wished that he could go to London.
1	Dick	Dick	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
2	listened	listen	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
4	these	this	DET	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	5	det	_	_
5	stories	story	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	wished	wish	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
9	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	12	mark	_	_
10	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
11	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
12	go	go	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	8	ccomp	_	_
13	to	to	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
14	London	London	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **listen** | past | Dick |  |  |  |  | to this stories | vn peer-30.3 «NP V PP.theme»: agent=Agent to story=Theme |
| 2 | **wish** | past | Dick *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn wish-62 «NP V for NP S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 3 | **go** | could | Dick |  |  | London |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme to london=Initial\_Location |

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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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