---
title: "O king!" said the abbot, "these are deep, hard questions, and I can… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: "O king!" said the abbot, "these are deep, hard questions, and I cannot answer them just now. Who acts: king, these. 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/pg18442/9/24/)

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, I. the Three Questions., sentence 24

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"O king!" said the abbot, "these are deep, hard questions, and I cannot answer them just now.

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**Who acts:** king, these · **What happens:** say, be, not answer · **To what, where:** abbot, 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 (king, these), 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:pg18442:9:24
# text = "O king!" said the abbot, "these are deep, hard questions, and I cannot answer them just now.
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
2	O	o	INTJ	UH	_	3	discourse	_	_
3	king	king	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	nsubj	_	SpaceAfter=No
4	!	!	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
5	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	_
6	said	say	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
7	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	8	det	_	_
8	abbot	abbot	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
10	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	13	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	these	this	PRON	DT	Number=Plur|PronType=Dem	13	nsubj	_	_
12	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	13	cop	_	_
13	deep	deep	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	6	parataxis	_	SpaceAfter=No
14	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	16	punct	_	_
15	hard	hard	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	16	amod	_	_
16	questions	question	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
17	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	22	punct	_	_
18	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	22	cc	_	_
19	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	22	nsubj	_	_
20	can	can	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	22	aux	_	SpaceAfter=No
21	not	not	PART	RB	Polarity=Neg	22	advmod	_	_
22	answer	answer	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	conj	_	_
23	them	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	22	obj	_	_
24	just	just	ADV	RB	_	25	advmod	_	_
25	now	now	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	22	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
26	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **say** *speech: assert* | past | king | the abbot |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **is** *in a quote* | present | these |  |  |  |  | deep *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **not** **answer** *speech: assert* *in a quote* | can | king |  | questions *= question* |  | now |  | vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent they=Eventuality |

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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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