---
title: All shook their heads and were very grave; for it seemed as if there… — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: All shook their heads and were very grave; for it seemed as if there was no hope. Who acts: it. 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 32

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All shook their heads and were very grave; for it seemed as if there was no hope.

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**Who acts:** it · **What happens:** shake, be, seem · **To what, where:** heads

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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 (it), 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:pg18442:27:32
# text = All shook their heads and were very grave; for it seemed as if there was no hope.
1	All	all	DET	DT	PronType=Tot	2	advmod	_	_
2	shook	shake	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=1|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	their	their	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Plur|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	heads	head	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	2	obj	_	_
5	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	8	cc	_	_
6	were	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	cop	_	_
7	very	very	ADV	RB	_	8	advmod	_	_
8	grave	grave	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	2	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	12	punct	_	_
10	for	for	ADP	IN	_	12	case	_	_
11	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
12	seemed	seem	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
13	as	as	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
14	if	if	SCONJ	IN	_	16	mark	_	_
15	there	there	PRON	EX	PronType=Dem	16	expl	_	_
16	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	18	cop	_	_
17	no	no	DET	DT	PronType=Neg	18	det	_	_
18	hope	hope	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	12	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
19	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **shake** | past |  | guards's heads |  |  |  |  | vn shake-22.3-2 «NP V NP together»: agent=Agent head=Patient |
| 2 | **is** | past |  |  |  |  |  | grave *property* | tree rules |
| 3 | **seem** | past | it |  |  |  |  |  | vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S\_INF»: agent=Theme |
| 4 | **is** | past |  |  |  |  |  | as no hope | tree rules |

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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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