---
title: One day King Philip bought a fine horse called Bu-ceph'a-lus. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: One day King Philip bought a fine horse called Bu-ceph'a-lus. Who acts: King, fine horse. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Alexander and Bucephalus., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Alexander and Bucephalus., sentence 1

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One day King Philip bought a fine horse called Bu-ceph'a-lus.

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**Who acts:** King, fine horse · **What happens:** buy, call · **To what, where:** fine horse, Bu ceph'a lus · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Alexander and Bucephalus.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (King, fine horse), 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:pg18442:37:1
# text = One day King Philip bought a fine horse called Bu-ceph'a-lus.
1	One	one	NUM	CD	NumForm=Word|NumType=Card	2	nummod	_	_
2	day	day	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obl:unmarked	_	_
3	King	King	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	5	nsubj	_	_
4	Philip	Philip	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	flat	_	_
5	bought	buy	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
6	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
7	fine	fine	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	8	amod	_	_
8	horse	horse	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	obj	_	_
9	called	call	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	8	acl	_	_
10	Bu	Bu	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	14	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	10	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	ceph'a	ceph'a	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	14	compound	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	12	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	lus	lu	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **buy** | past | King | a fine horse |  |  | day |  | vn accept-77.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent horse=Theme |
| 2 | **call** | participle | a fine horse *not said here* | Bu ceph'a lus |  |  |  |  | vn initiate\_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |

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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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