---
title: The servant did as he was bidden. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: The servant did as he was bidden. Who acts: servant. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, King Alfred and the Beggar., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, King Alfred and the Beggar., sentence 8

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The servant did as he was bidden.

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**Who acts:** servant · **What happens:** do, bid · **To what, where:** servant

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, King Alfred and the Beggar.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (servant), 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:pg18442:4:8
# text = The servant did as he was bidden.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	servant	servant	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	did	do	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
5	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
6	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	7	aux:pass	_	_
7	bidden	bid	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	3	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **do** | past | the servant |  |  |  |  |  | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **bid** | past · passive |  | servant |  |  |  |  | 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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