---
title: He sat down at a table in the banquet hall, and rich foods were plac… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: He sat down at a table in the banquet hall, and rich foods were placed before him. Who acts: Damocles. 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 13

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He sat down at a table in the banquet hall, and rich foods were placed before him.

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**Who acts:** Damocles · **What happens:** sit down, place · **To what, where:** table, rich foods

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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 (Damocles), 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:pg18442:33:13
# text = He sat down at a table in the banquet hall, and rich foods were placed before him.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	sat	sit	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	down	down	ADP	RP	_	2	compound:prt	_	_
4	at	at	ADP	IN	_	6	case	_	_
5	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	6	det	_	_
6	table	table	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	_
7	in	in	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
9	banquet	banquet	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	compound	_	_
10	hall	hall	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
12	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	16	cc	_	_
13	rich	rich	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	foods	food	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	16	nsubj	_	_
15	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	16	aux:pass	_	_
16	placed	place	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	2	conj	_	_
17	before	before	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	16	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **sit down** | past | Damocles |  |  | a table |  | in the banquet hall | vn assuming\_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent at table=Location |
| 2 | **place** | past · passive |  | rich foods |  |  | before Damocles |  | vn put-9.1-2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: subject=Theme before he=Destination |

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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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