---
title: He was a tall, willful lad, and was nick-named Short Stocking. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: He was a tall, willful lad, and was nick-named Short Stocking. Who acts: first. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Sons of William the Conqueror., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Sons of William the Conqueror., sentence 12

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He was a tall, willful lad, and was nick-named Short Stocking.

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**Who acts:** first · **What happens:** be, name, stock · **To what, where:** tall willful lad

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Sons of William the Conqueror.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (first), 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:pg18442:6:12
# text = He was a tall, willful lad, and was nick-named Short Stocking.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	cop	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
4	tall	tall	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	4	punct	_	_
6	willful	willful	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	7	amod	_	_
7	lad	lad	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	13	cc	_	_
10	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	aux:pass	_	_
11	nick	nick	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	named	name	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	7	parataxis	_	_
14	Short	short	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	13	xcomp	_	_
15	Stocking	stock	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	14	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	7	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | first | a tall willful lad |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **name** | past · passive |  |  |  |  |  | short *property* | vn appoint-29.1 «NP V NP» |
| 3 | **stock** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: 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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