---
title: The air quivers; the sea itself trembles; the sky is black. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: The air quivers; the sea itself trembles; the sky is black. Who acts: air, sea, sky. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, V. the Fortune., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/53/78/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Fifty Famous Stories Retold](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/) / [V. the Fortune.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/53/) / 78

# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, V. the Fortune., sentence 78

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
The air quivers; the sea itself trembles; the sky is black.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** air, sea, sky · **What happens:** quiver, tremble, be

<!-- .vabout -->
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 (air, sea, sky), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg18442:53:78
# text = The air quivers; the sea itself trembles; the sky is black.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	air	air	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	quivers	quiver	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	8	punct	_	_
5	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	sea	sea	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
7	itself	itself	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Emp|Reflex=Yes	6	nmod:unmarked	_	_
8	trembles	tremble	VERB	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	13	punct	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	sky	sky	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
12	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
13	black	black	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **quiver** | present | the air |  |  |  |  |  | vn body\_internal\_states-40.6 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
| 2 | **tremble** | present | the sea  sea |  |  |  |  |  | vn modes\_of\_being\_with\_motion-47.3 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **is** | present | the sky |  |  |  |  | black *property* | tree rules |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 77](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/53/77/)
- next →: [sentence 79](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/53/79/)
- ↑ back to [V. the Fortune.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/53/)