---
title: He was the only person left alive to tell the sad story. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: He was the only person left alive to tell the sad story. Who acts: man. 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/pg18442/7/39/)

<!-- 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/) / 39

# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The White Ship., sentence 39

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
He was the only person left alive to tell the sad story.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** man · **What happens:** be, leave, tell · **To what, where:** only person, sad story · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .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 (man), 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:pg18442:7:39
# text = He was the only person left alive to tell the sad story.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
4	only	only	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	5	amod	_	_
5	person	person	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
6	left	leave	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	5	acl	_	_
7	alive	alive	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	xcomp	_	_
8	to	to	PART	TO	_	9	mark	_	_
9	tell	tell	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	advcl	_	_
10	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	12	det	_	_
11	sad	sad	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	story	story	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | man | the only person |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **leave** | participle |  | the only person *not said here* |  |  |  | alive *property* | vn escape-51.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **tell** *speech: assert* | to-infinitive |  | the sad story |  |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent story=Recipient |

<!-- .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 38](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/7/38/)
- next →: [sentence 40](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/7/40/)
- ↑ back to [The White Ship.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/7/)