---
title: The water was strewn with broken masts and pieces of timber which th… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: The water was strewn with broken masts and pieces of timber which the cannon balls had knocked from the ships. Who acts: water. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, V. the Fortune., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, V. the Fortune., sentence 41

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The water was strewn with broken masts and pieces of timber which the cannon balls had knocked from the ships.

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**Who acts:** water · **What happens:** be, knock · **To what, where:** cannon balls, ships

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, V. the Fortune.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (water), 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:pg18442:53:41
# text = The water was strewn with broken masts and pieces of timber which the cannon balls had knocked from the ships.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	water	water	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
4	strewn	strewn	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
5	with	with	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	broken	broken	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	masts	mast	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	4	obl	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	9	cc	_	_
9	pieces	piece	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	conj	_	_
10	of	of	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	timber	timber	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nmod	_	_
12	which	which	PRON	WDT	PronType=Rel	17	obj	_	_
13	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
14	cannon	cannon	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	compound	_	_
15	balls	ball	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	17	nsubj:pass	_	_
16	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	17	aux	_	_
17	knocked	knock	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	11	acl:relcl	_	_
18	from	from	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
19	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	20	det	_	_
20	ships	ship	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	17	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | the water |  |  |  |  | with broken masts and pieces of timber; strewn *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **knock** | past · perfect · passive |  | the cannon balls |  | the ships |  |  | tree rules |

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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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