---
title: When the cup was half full, he lifted it toward his mouth. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: When the cup was half full, he lifted it toward his mouth. Who acts: cup, 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 42

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When the cup was half full, he lifted it toward his mouth.

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**Who acts:** cup, hawk · **What happens:** be, lift · **To what, where:** cup, mouth

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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 (cup, 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:pg18442:41:42
# text = When the cup was half full, he lifted it toward his mouth.
1	When	when	SCONJ	WRB	_	6	mark	_	_
2	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
3	cup	cup	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	_
4	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
5	half	half	ADV	RB	NumForm=Word|NumType=Frac	6	advmod	_	_
6	full	full	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	9	punct	_	_
8	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	nsubj	_	_
9	lifted	lift	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	6	conj	_	_
10	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	9	obj	_	_
11	toward	toward	ADP	IN	_	13	case	_	_
12	his	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	13	nmod:poss	_	_
13	mouth	mouth	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | the cup |  |  |  |  | full, half *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **lift** | past | hawk | cup |  | hawk's mouth |  |  | vn put\_direction-9.4 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent it=Theme toward mouth=Destination |

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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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