---
title: He put the cup to his lips, and was about to drink. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: He put the cup to his lips, and was about to drink. 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 34

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He put the cup to his lips, and was about to drink.

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**Who acts:** hawk · **What happens:** put, be, drink · **To what, where:** cup

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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:pg18442:41:34
# text = He put the cup to his lips, and was about to drink.
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	2	nsubj	_	_
2	put	put	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	cup	cup	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	_
5	to	to	ADP	IN	_	7	case	_	_
6	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	7	nmod:poss	_	_
7	lips	lip	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	11	punct	_	_
9	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	11	cc	_	_
10	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
11	about	about	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	parataxis	_	_
12	to	to	PART	TO	_	13	mark	_	_
13	drink	drink	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	11	xcomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **put** | past | hawk | the cup |  |  |  | to hawk's lips | vn invest-13.5.4-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent cup=Goal |
| 2 | **is** | past |  |  |  |  |  | about *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **drink** | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1-1 «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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