---
title: There was once a king whose name was Di-o-nys'i-us. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: There was once a king whose name was Di-o-nys'i-us. Who acts: king, name. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Sword of Damocles., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Sword of Damocles., sentence 1

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There was once a king whose name was Di-o-nys'i-us.

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**Who acts:** king, name · **What happens:** be · **To what, where:** us

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Sword of Damocles.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (king, name), 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:pg18442:33:1
# text = There was once a king whose name was Di-o-nys'i-us.
1	There	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	2	expl	_	_
2	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	once	once	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Mult	2	advmod	_	_
4	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	5	det	_	_
5	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
6	whose	whose	PRON	WP$	Poss=Yes|PronType=Rel	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	name	name	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	_
8	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	15	cop	_	_
9	Di	Di	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	o	of	ADP	IN	Abbr=Yes	15	mark	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	11	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	nys'i	nys'i	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	15	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	15	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	us	we	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=1|PronType=Prs	5	nmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | a king |  |  | there |  | once *property* | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **is a** | past | name | us |  |  |  |  | tree rules |

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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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