---
title: It was before him, behind him, all around him. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: It was before him, behind him, all around him. Who acts: cheek. 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 62

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It was before him, behind him, all around him.

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**Who acts:** cheek · **What happens:** be

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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 (cheek), 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:pg18442:53:62
# text = It was before him, behind him, all around him.
1	It	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	cop	_	_
3	before	before	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	7	punct	_	_
6	behind	behind	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
7	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	all	all	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
10	around	around	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	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 | cheek |  |  |  | before fire |  | 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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