---
title: "Drink," said he, "for thy need is greater than mine." — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: "Drink," said he, "for thy need is greater than mine." Who acts: Drink, soldier, thy. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Ungrateful Soldier., 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/pg18442/18/12/)

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Ungrateful Soldier., sentence 12

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"Drink," said he, "for thy need is greater than mine."

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**Who acts:** Drink, soldier, thy · **What happens:** say, be, need · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Ungrateful Soldier.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Drink, soldier, thy), 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:pg18442:18:12
# text = "Drink," said he, "for thy need is greater than mine."
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	Drink	drink	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
3	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	2	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
5	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
8	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	for	for	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
10	thy	thy	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=2|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs|Style=Arch	11	nmod:poss	_	_
11	need	need	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obl	_	_
12	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
13	greater	great	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	5	ccomp	_	_
14	than	than	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	mine	my	PRON	PRP	Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	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 | Drink |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **is** *in a quote* | present | soldier |  |  |  |  | for thy need; than Drink; great *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **need** *in a quote* |  | thy |  |  |  |  |  | nom need «state 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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