---
title: He held it so as to catch the slowly falling drops. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: He held it so as to catch the slowly falling drops. Who acts: hawk. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The King and His Hawk., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The King and His Hawk., sentence 31

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He held it so as to catch the slowly falling drops.

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**Who acts:** hawk · **What happens:** hold, catch, fall · **To what, where:** cup, falling drops

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The King and His Hawk.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (hawk), 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:pg18442:41:31
# text = He held it so as to catch the slowly falling drops.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	held	hold	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	obj	_	_
4	so	so	ADV	RB	_	7	advmod	_	_
5	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	7	mark	_	_
6	to	to	PART	TO	_	7	mark	_	_
7	catch	catch	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	advcl	_	_
8	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
9	slowly	slowly	ADV	RB	_	10	advmod	_	_
10	falling	fall	VERB	VBG	Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Part	11	amod	_	_
11	drops	drop	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	7	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **hold** | past | hawk | cup |  |  |  |  | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme |
| 2 | **catch** | to-infinitive | hawk *not said here* | the falling drops |  |  |  |  | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent drop=Theme |
| 3 | **fall** | gerund |  |  |  |  |  | slowly *property* | vn occur-48.3 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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