---
title: They pushed off just as the ship was be-gin-ning to settle beneath t… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: They pushed off just as the ship was be-gin-ning to settle beneath the waves. Who acts: friends, ship. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The White Ship., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/7/26/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Fifty Famous Stories Retold](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/) / [The White Ship.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/7/) / 26

# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The White Ship., sentence 26

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
They pushed off just as the ship was be-gin-ning to settle beneath the waves.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** friends, ship · **What happens:** push off, be, settle · **To what, where:** gin ning

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The White Ship.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (friends, ship), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg18442:7:26
# text = They pushed off just as the ship was be-gin-ning to settle beneath the waves.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	pushed	push	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	off	off	ADP	RP	_	2	compound:prt	_	_
4	just	just	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
5	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
6	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
7	ship	ship	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	nsubj	_	_
8	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
9	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	cop	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	gin	gin	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	ning	ning	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
14	to	to	PART	TO	_	15	mark	_	_
15	settle	settle	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	acl	_	_
16	beneath	beneath	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
17	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	18	det	_	_
18	waves	wave	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **push off** | past | friends *= friend* |  |  |  |  |  | vn push-12-1-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is a** | past | the ship | gin ning |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **settle** | to-infinitive | friends *= friend* *not said here* |  |  |  |  | beneath the waves | vn correspond-36.1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 25](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/7/25/)
- next →: [sentence 27](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/7/27/)
- ↑ back to [The White Ship.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/7/)