---
title: He heard them call to him to come. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: He heard them call to him to come. Who acts: son, men. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/53/55/)

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, V. the Fortune., sentence 55

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He heard them call to him to come.

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**Who acts:** son, men · **What happens:** hear, call, come · **To what, where:** men, son · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (son, men), 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:pg18442:53:55
# text = He heard them call to him to come.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	heard	hear	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	obj	_	_
4	call	call	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
5	to	to	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
6	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obl	_	_
7	to	to	PART	TO	_	8	mark	_	_
8	come	come	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hear** | past | son | men *= man* |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **call** | infinitive | men *= man* *not said here* |  | son |  |  |  | vn animal\_sounds-38 «NP V PP.recipient»: agent=Agent to he=Recipient |
| 3 | **come** | to-infinitive | men *= man* *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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