---
title: All went well until it was time to spread the table for dinner. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: All went well until it was time to spread the table for dinner. Who acts: table. 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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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Antonio Canova., sentence 20

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All went well until it was time to spread the table for dinner.

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**Who acts:** table · **What happens:** go, be, spread · **To what, where:** table

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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 (table), 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:pg18442:54:20
# text = All went well until it was time to spread the table for dinner.
1	All	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	2	advmod	_	_
2	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	well	well	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	2	advmod	_	_
4	until	until	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
5	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
6	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
7	time	time	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	spread	spread	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	advcl	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	table	table	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	_
12	for	for	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
13	dinner	dinner	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go** | past |  |  |  |  |  | well *property* | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **is** | past | table |  |  |  | until time |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **spread** | to-infinitive |  | the table |  |  |  | for dinner | vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location table=Theme |

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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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