---
title: A great flash of light fills the air; clouds of smoke shoot quickly… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: A great flash of light fills the air; clouds of smoke shoot quickly upward to the sky; and-- Who acts: great flash, clouds, light. 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 74

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A great flash of light fills the air; clouds of smoke shoot quickly upward to the sky; and--

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**Who acts:** great flash, clouds, light · **What happens:** fill, shoot, flash, cloud · **To what, where:** air, sky, smoke

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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 (great flash, clouds, light), 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:pg18442:53:74
# text = A great flash of light fills the air; clouds of smoke shoot quickly upward to the sky; and--
1	A	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	flash	flash	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
4	of	of	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	light	light	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	_
6	fills	fill	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	air	air	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	13	punct	_	_
10	clouds	cloud	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	nsubj	_	_
11	of	of	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
12	smoke	smoke	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	nmod	_	_
13	shoot	shoot	VERB	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	parataxis	_	_
14	quickly	quickly	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
15	upward	upward	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
16	to	to	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	sky	sky	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	6	punct	_	_
20	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	19	cc	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	--	--	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **fill** | present | a great flash of light | the air |  |  |  |  | vn other\_cos-45.4 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent air=Patient |
| 2 | **shoot** | present | clouds of smoke |  |  | the sky |  | quickly, upward *property* | vn throw-17.1-1 «NP V NP PP.destinations»: agent=Agent to sky=Destination |
| 3 | **flash** |  | light |  |  |  |  |  | nom flash «event intransitive»: of=agent |
| 4 | **cloud** |  |  | smoke |  |  |  |  | nom cloud «phenomenon transitive»: of=patient |

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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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