---
title: Well, then, answer my first question: How long shall I live? — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: Well, then, answer my first question: How long shall I live? Who acts: you, I, my. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, II. the Three Answers., 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/pg18442/10/26/)

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, II. the Three Answers., sentence 26

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Well, then, answer my first question: How long shall I live?

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**Who acts:** you, I, my · **What happens:** answer, live, question · **To what, where:** first question

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, II. the Three Answers.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, I, my), 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:pg18442:10:26
# text = Well, then, answer my first question: How long shall I live?
1	Well	well	INTJ	UH	_	5	discourse	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	1	punct	_	_
3	then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	5	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	_
5	answer	answer	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
6	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	8	nmod:poss	_	_
7	first	first	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos|NumForm=Word|NumType=Ord	8	amod	_	_
8	question	question	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	:	:	PUNCT	:	_	14	punct	_	_
10	How	how	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	11	advmod	_	_
11	long	long	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	14	advmod	_	_
12	shall	shall	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	14	aux	_	_
13	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	14	nsubj	_	_
14	live	live	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	5	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **answer** *speech: assert* | imperative | you *not said here* | my first question |  |  | then |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent question=Eventuality |
| 2 | **live** | shall | I |  |  |  |  | long *property* | vn exist-47.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 3 | **question** |  | my |  |  |  |  |  | nom question «communication transitive»: poss=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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