---
title: With a kitchen knife in his hand, Antonio began to cut and carve thi… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: With a kitchen knife in his hand, Antonio began to cut and carve this butter. Who acts: Antonio. 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 45

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With a kitchen knife in his hand, Antonio began to cut and carve this butter.

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**Who acts:** Antonio · **What happens:** begin, cut, carve · **To what, where:** butter

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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 (Antonio), 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:pg18442:54:45
# text = With a kitchen knife in his hand, Antonio began to cut and carve this butter.
1	With	with	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
2	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
3	kitchen	kitchen	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	compound	_	_
4	knife	knife	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	_
5	in	in	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	hand	hand	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
9	Antonio	Antonio	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	10	nsubj	_	_
10	began	begin	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
12	cut	cut	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	xcomp	_	_
13	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	14	cc	_	_
14	carve	carve	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	conj	_	_
15	this	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	16	det	_	_
16	butter	butter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	10	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **begin** | past | Antonio |  |  |  |  | with a kitchen knife in boy's hand | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **cut** | to-infinitive | Antonio *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer |
| 3 | **carve** | infinitive | Antonio *not said here* | this butter |  |  |  |  | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent butter=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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