---
title: "Surely," she said, "it can do us no good to keep such a man in pris… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: "Surely," she said, "it can do us no good to keep such a man in prison." Who acts: wife, handkerchief. 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/pg18442/54/151/)

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Antonio Canova., sentence 151

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"Surely," she said, "it can do us no good to keep such a man in prison."

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**Who acts:** wife, handkerchief · **What happens:** say, do, keep · **To what, where:** good, us, man, prison · **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 (wife, handkerchief), 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:pg18442:54:151
# text = "Surely," she said, "it can do us no good to keep such a man in prison."
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Surely	surely	ADV	RB	_	6	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	6	punct	_	_
5	she	she	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Fem|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	nsubj	_	_
6	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
8	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
10	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	do	do	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	ccomp	_	_
12	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	11	iobj	_	_
13	no	no	ADV	RB	_	14	advmod	_	_
14	good	good	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	obj	_	_
15	to	to	PART	TO	_	16	mark	_	_
16	keep	keep	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	advcl	_	_
17	such	such	DET	PDT	PronType=Ind	19	det:predet	_	_
18	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	19	det	_	_
19	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obj	_	_
20	in	in	ADP	IN	_	21	case	_	_
21	prison	prison	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	16	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
22	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | wife |  |  |  |  | surely *property* | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 2 | **do** *in a quote* | can | handkerchief | good | us |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **keep** *in a quote* | to-infinitive | handkerchief *not said here* | such man |  | prison |  |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent man=Theme in prison=Location |

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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 150](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/54/150/)
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- ↑ back to [Antonio Canova.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/54/)