---
title: They tried to whip him, but that only made him worse. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: They tried to whip him, but that only made him worse. Who acts: lus. 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 4

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They tried to whip him, but that only made him worse.

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**Who acts:** lus · **What happens:** try, whip, make · **To what, where:** King

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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 (lus), 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:pg18442:37:4
# text = They tried to whip him, but that only made him worse.
1	They	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	tried	try	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	to	to	PART	TO	_	4	mark	_	_
4	whip	whip	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	xcomp	_	_
5	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
7	but	but	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
8	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	10	mark	_	_
9	only	only	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
10	made	make	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	conj	_	_
11	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	obj	_	_
12	worse	bad	ADJ	JJR	Degree=Cmp	10	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **try** | past | lus *= lu* |  |  |  |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **whip** *not said to happen* | to-infinitive | lus *= lu* *not said here* | King |  |  |  |  | vn knead-26.5 «NP V NP.material»: agent=Agent he=Material |
| 3 | **make** | past | lus *= lu* *not said here* | King |  |  |  | bad *property* | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset he=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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