---
title: "O sir! give me a drink, for I am dying." — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: "O sir! give me a drink, for I am dying." Who acts: you, I. 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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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Ungrateful Soldier., sentence 7

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"O sir! give me a drink, for I am dying."

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**Who acts:** you, I · **What happens:** give, die · **To what, where:** drink, me

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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 (you, I), 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:pg18442:18:7
# text = "O sir! give me a drink, for I am dying."
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	O	o	INTJ	UH	_	5	discourse	_	_
3	sir	sir	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	vocative	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
5	give	give	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	me	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	iobj	_	_
7	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	drink	drink	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	for	for	SCONJ	IN	_	13	mark	_	_
11	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	13	nsubj	_	_
12	am	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	aux	_	_
13	dying	die	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	5	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	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 | **give** *in a quote* | imperative | you *not said here* | a drink | me |  |  | sir *vocative* | vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent i=Recipient drink=Theme |
| 2 | **die** *in a quote* | present · progressive | I |  |  |  |  |  | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute |

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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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