---
title: Then Cincinnatus wondered what they could mean. " — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: Then Cincinnatus wondered what they could mean. " Who acts: Cincinnatus, cloak. 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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[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/27/38/)

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Story of Cincinnatus., sentence 38

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Then Cincinnatus wondered what they could mean. "

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**Who acts:** Cincinnatus, cloak · **What happens:** wonder, mean · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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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 (Cincinnatus, cloak), 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:pg18442:27:38
# text = Then Cincinnatus wondered what they could mean. "
1	Then	then	ADV	RB	PronType=Dem	3	advmod	_	_
2	Cincinnatus	Cincinnatus	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	wondered	wonder	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	7	obj	_	_
5	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	7	nsubj	_	_
6	could	could	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	7	aux	_	_
7	mean	mean	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	3	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
8	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
9	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	3	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **wonder** *speech: ask* | past | Cincinnatus |  |  |  | then |  | vn care-88.1-1 «NP V what S»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus |
| 2 | **mean** | could | cloak |  |  |  |  |  | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=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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- ← previous: [sentence 37](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/27/37/)
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