---
title: Years passed by, and the three boys had grown up to be men. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: Years passed by, and the three boys had grown up to be men. Who acts: Years, three boys. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/6/35/)

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Sons of William the Conqueror., sentence 35

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Years passed by, and the three boys had grown up to be men.

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**Who acts:** Years, three boys · **What happens:** pass by, grow up, be · **To what, where:** men

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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 (Years, three boys), 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:pg18442:6:35
# text = Years passed by, and the three boys had grown up to be men.
1	Years	year	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	nsubj	_	_
2	passed	pass	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
3	by	by	ADP	IN	_	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	three	three	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	8	nummod	_	_
8	boys	boy	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	nsubj	_	_
9	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	grown	grow	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	2	conj	_	_
11	up	up	ADP	RP	_	10	compound:prt	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	14	mark	_	_
13	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	14	cop	_	_
14	men	man	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	10	obl:agent	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **pass by** | participle | Years |  |  |  |  |  | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **grow up** | past · perfect | the three boys |  |  |  |  |  | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **is a** | to-infinitive |  | men |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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