---
title: "I will try to answer them, O king!" said the abbot. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: "I will try to answer them, O king!" said the abbot. Who acts: abbot. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, I. the Three Questions., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/9/21/)

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, I. the Three Questions., sentence 21

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"I will try to answer them, O king!" said the abbot.

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**Who acts:** abbot · **What happens:** try, answer, say · **To what, where:** questions · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, I. the Three Questions.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (abbot), 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:pg18442:9:21
# text = "I will try to answer them, O king!" said the abbot.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
3	will	will	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	try	try	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	ccomp	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	answer	answer	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	xcomp	_	_
7	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	10	punct	_	_
9	O	o	INTJ	UH	_	10	discourse	_	_
10	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
13	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	abbot	abbot	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
16	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	13	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **try** *in a quote* | future | the abbot *= abbot* |  |  |  |  |  | vn try-61.1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **answer** *speech: assert* *not said to happen, in a quote* | to-infinitive | the abbot *= abbot* *not said here* |  | questions *= question* |  |  |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent they=Eventuality |
| 3 | **say** *speech: express* | past | the abbot |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |

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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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