---
title: He was my best friend, and I have killed him." — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: He was my best friend, and I have killed him." 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 68

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He was my best friend, and I have killed him."

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**Who acts:** hawk · **What happens:** be, kill · **To what, where:** best friend, I

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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:pg18442:41:68
# text = He was my best friend, and I have killed him."
1	He	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
3	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	5	nmod:poss	_	_
4	best	good	ADJ	JJS	Degree=Sup	5	amod	_	_
5	friend	friend	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
8	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	10	nsubj:pass	_	_
9	have	have	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	killed	kill	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	5	conj	_	_
11	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	10	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is a** | past | hawk | my best friend |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **kill** | present · perfect · passive |  | I |  |  |  |  | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V NP ADJ»: subject=Experiencer he=Result |

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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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