---
title: "This horse has served you well for many a year," they said. " — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: "This horse has served you well for many a year," they said. " Who acts: judges. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Bell of Atri., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Bell of Atri., sentence 83

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"This horse has served you well for many a year," they said. "

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**Who acts:** judges · **What happens:** serve, say · **To what, where:** horse · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Bell of Atri.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (judges), 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:pg18442:25:83
# text = "This horse has served you well for many a year," they said. "
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	This	this	DET	DT	Number=Sing|PronType=Dem	3	det	_	_
3	horse	horse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	nsubj:pass	_	_
4	has	have	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	5	aux	_	_
5	served	serve	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	15	ccomp	_	_
6	you	you	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Person=2|PronType=Prs	5	obj	_	_
7	well	well	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	5	advmod	_	_
8	for	for	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
9	many	many	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
10	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
11	year	year	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
14	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	15	nsubj	_	_
15	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	15	punct	_	_
17	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **serve** *in a quote* | present · perfect · passive |  | this horse |  |  | year | well *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | judges *= judge* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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