---
title: Alas! how could he hope that it might be done? — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: Alas! how could he hope that it might be done? Who acts: Charney. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Antonio Canova., 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/pg18442/54/129/)

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Antonio Canova., sentence 129

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Alas! how could he hope that it might be done?

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**Who acts:** Charney · **What happens:** hope, do · **To what, where:** treasure · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Antonio Canova.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Charney), 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:pg18442:54:129
# text = Alas! how could he hope that it might be done?
1	Alas	alas	INTJ	UH	_	6	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	1	punct	_	_
3	how	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	6	advmod	_	_
4	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	6	aux	_	_
5	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	hope	hope	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
7	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
8	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj:pass	_	_
9	might	might	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
10	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	aux:pass	_	_
11	done	do	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	6	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hope** | could | Charney |  |  |  |  |  | vn long-32.2 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme |
| 2 | **do** | might · passive |  | treasure |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Eventuality |

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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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- ← previous: [sentence 128](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/54/128/)
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- ↑ back to [Antonio Canova.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/54/)