---
title: And then she would box his ears, or beat him with the broom-stick. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: And then she would box his ears, or beat him with the broom-stick. Who acts: maid, box. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, II. the Kitchen., 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/pg18442/50/23/)

<!-- 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/) / [II. the Kitchen.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/50/) / 23

# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, II. the Kitchen., sentence 23

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
And then she would box his ears, or beat him with the broom-stick.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** maid, box · **What happens:** box, beat · **To what, where:** fellow

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, II. the Kitchen.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (maid, box), 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:pg18442:50:23
# text = And then she would box his ears, or beat him with the broom-stick.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
2	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	5	advmod	_	_
3	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
4	would	would	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	box	box	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
6	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	ears	ear	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	or	or	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
10	beat	beat	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
11	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	obj	_	_
12	with	with	ADP	IN	_	16	case	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	16	det	_	_
14	broom	broom	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	14	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	stick	stick	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **box** | would | maid |  |  |  | then |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **beat** | infinitive | box and fellow's ears | fellow |  |  |  | with the broom stick | vn hit-18.1-1 «NP V NP PP.instrument»: agent=Agent he=Patient with stick=Instrument |

<!-- .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 22](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/50/22/)
- next →: [sentence 24](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/50/24/)
- ↑ back to [II. the Kitchen.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/50/)