---
title: He was counting the paving stones, as he had done a thousand times b… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: He was counting the paving stones, as he had done a thousand times before. Who acts: work. 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 79

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He was counting the paving stones, as he had done a thousand times before.

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**Who acts:** work · **What happens:** count, do · **To what, where:** paving stones

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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 (work), 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:pg18442:54:79
# text = He was counting the paving stones, as he had done a thousand times before.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	3	aux	_	_
3	counting	count	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
4	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
5	paving	paving	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	compound	_	_
6	stones	stone	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	3	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
8	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	11	mark	_	_
9	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	11	nsubj	_	_
10	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
11	done	do	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	3	advcl	_	_
12	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	thousand	thousand	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	14	nummod	_	_
14	times	time	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	11	obl:unmarked	_	_
15	before	before	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **count** | past · progressive | work | the paving stones |  |  |  |  | vn multiply-108 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent stone=Theme |
| 2 | **do** | past · perfect | work |  |  |  | time | before *property* | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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