---
title: One man clung to a floating plank, and was saved the next day. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: One man clung to a floating plank, and was saved the next day. Who acts: One man. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The White Ship., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The White Ship., sentence 38

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One man clung to a floating plank, and was saved the next day.

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**Who acts:** One man · **What happens:** cling, float, save

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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 (One man), 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:pg18442:7:38
# text = One man clung to a floating plank, and was saved the next day.
1	One	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	2	nummod	_	_
2	man	man	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	clung	cling	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
4	to	to	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	7	det	_	_
6	floating	float	VERB	VBG	VerbForm=Ger	7	amod	_	_
7	plank	plank	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux:pass	_	_
11	saved	save	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	3	conj	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	next	next	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obl:unmarked	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **cling** | participle | One man |  |  |  |  | to a floating plank | vn cling-22.5 «NP V PP.co-theme»: agent=Theme to plank=Co-Theme |
| 2 | **float** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn run-51.3.2-2 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **save** | past · passive | One man *not said here* |  |  |  | day |  | vn get-13.5.1-1 «NP V NP» |

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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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