---
title: They tor-ment-ed Dick so much, that he did not know what to do. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: They tor-ment-ed Dick so much, that he did not know what to do. Who acts: Dick. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, II. the Kitchen., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, II. the Kitchen., sentence 28

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They tor-ment-ed Dick so much, that he did not know what to do.

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**Who acts:** Dick · **What happens:** not know, do · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (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:pg18442:50:28
# text = They tor-ment-ed Dick so much, that he did not know what to do.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
2	tor	tor	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	1	appos	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	ment	ment	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	ed	ed	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	7	nmod:desc	_	_
7	Dick	Dick	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
8	so	so	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
9	much	much	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	15	punct	_	_
11	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	15	mark	_	_
12	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
13	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	aux	_	_
14	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	15	advmod	_	_
15	know	know	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	7	conj	_	_
16	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	18	obj	_	_
17	to	to	PART	TO	_	18	mark	_	_
18	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	15	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **not** **know** | past · do-support | Dick |  |  |  |  |  | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V how S\_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 2 | **do** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Eventuality |

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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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