---
title: The tyrant was sur-prised that anybody should make such an offer. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: The tyrant was sur-prised that anybody should make such an offer. Who acts: anybody. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Damon and Pythias., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Damon and Pythias., sentence 12

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The tyrant was sur-prised that anybody should make such an offer.

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**Who acts:** anybody · **What happens:** prise, make · **To what, where:** tyrant, offer

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Damon and Pythias.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (anybody), 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:pg18442:34:12
# text = The tyrant was sur-prised that anybody should make such an offer.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	tyrant	tyrant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj:pass	_	_
3	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	aux:pass	_	_
4	sur	sur	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	prised	prise	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
7	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
8	anybody	anybody	PRON	NN	Number=Sing|PronType=Ind	10	nsubj	_	_
9	should	should	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	make	make	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	advcl	_	_
11	such	such	DET	PDT	PronType=Ind	13	det:predet	_	_
12	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	13	det	_	_
13	offer	offer	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **prise** | past · passive |  | the tyrant |  |  |  |  | vn remove-10.1 «NP V NP»: subject=Theme |
| 2 | **make** | should | anybody | such offer |  |  |  |  | vn build-26.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent offer=Product |

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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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