---
title: "O king! that cannot be," said the shepherd; "for I can neither read… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: "O king! that cannot be," said the shepherd; "for I can neither read nor write." Who acts: king. 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/pg18442/10/46/)

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, II. the Three Answers., sentence 46

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"O king! that cannot be," said the shepherd; "for I can neither read nor write."

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**Who acts:** king · **What happens:** say, read, write · **To what, where:** shepherd · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (king), 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:pg18442:10:46
# text = "O king! that cannot be," said the shepherd; "for I can neither read nor write."
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	O	o	INTJ	UH	_	3	discourse	_	_
3	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
5	that	that	PRON	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	8	nsubj	_	_
6	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	8	advmod	_	_
8	be	be	AUX	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	acl:relcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
11	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	shepherd	shepherd	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	20	punct	_	_
15	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	20	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	for	for	SCONJ	IN	_	20	mark	_	_
17	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	20	nsubj	_	_
18	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	20	aux	_	_
19	neither	neither	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	_
20	read	read	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	ccomp	_	_
21	nor	nor	CCONJ	CC	Polarity=Neg	22	cc	_	_
22	write	write	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	20	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	20	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
24	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	20	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | king | the shepherd |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **read** *in a quote* | can | king |  |  |  |  | neither *property* | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **write** *in a quote* | infinitive | king *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V»: agent=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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