---
title: Why did they ride thus? and what had happened to the Roman army? — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: Why did they ride thus? and what had happened to the Roman army? Who acts: mountains. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Story of Cincinnatus., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Story of Cincinnatus., sentence 18

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Why did they ride thus? and what had happened to the Roman army?

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**Who acts:** mountains · **What happens:** ride, happen

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Story of Cincinnatus.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (mountains), 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:pg18442:27:18
# text = Why did they ride thus? and what had happened to the Roman army?
1	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	4	advmod	_	_
2	did	do	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
4	ride	ride	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	thus	thus	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
7	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	10	cc	_	_
8	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	10	nsubj	_	_
9	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	aux	_	_
10	happened	happen	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	4	conj	_	_
11	to	to	ADP	IN	_	14	case	_	_
12	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	14	det	_	_
13	Roman	roman	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	14	amod	_	_
14	army	army	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	10	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
15	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **ride** | past · do-support | mountains *= mountain* |  |  |  |  | thus *property* | vn nonvehicle-51.4.2 «NP.agent V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **happen** | past · perfect |  |  |  |  |  | to the Roman army | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |

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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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