---
title: I am ill, and at the best have not long to live. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: I am ill, and at the best have not long to live. Who acts: I, best. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Story of Regulus., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Story of Regulus., sentence 34

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I am ill, and at the best have not long to live.

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**Who acts:** I, best · **What happens:** be, not be, live

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Story of Regulus.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I, best), 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:pg18442:28:34
# text = I am ill, and at the best have not long to live.
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	3	nsubj	_	_
2	am	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	3	cop	_	_
3	ill	ill	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
6	at	at	ADP	IN	_	8	case	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	best	good	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	11	nsubj	_	_
9	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	aux	_	_
10	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	11	advmod	_	_
11	long	long	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	conj	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
13	live	live	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | I |  |  |  |  | ill *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **not** **be** | present | the best |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **live** | to-infinitive | the best *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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