---
title: His only pastime was walking back and forth in the paved prison yard. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: His only pastime was walking back and forth in the paved prison yard. Who acts: only pastime. 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 76

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His only pastime was walking back and forth in the paved prison yard.

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**Who acts:** only pastime · **What happens:** walk back, pave

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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 (only pastime), 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:pg18442:54:76
# text = His only pastime was walking back and forth in the paved prison yard.
1	His	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	3	nmod:poss	_	_
2	only	only	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	pastime	pastime	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	walking	walk	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
6	back	back	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
8	forth	forth	ADV	RB	_	6	conj	_	_
9	in	in	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
11	paved	pave	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	13	amod	_	_
12	prison	prison	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	compound	_	_
13	yard	yard	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **walk back** | past · progressive | gentleman's only pastime |  |  |  |  | in the paved prison yard | vn run-51.3.2-2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in yard=Trajectory |
| 2 | **pave** | participle |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn fill-9.8-1 «NP V NP»: agent=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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