---
title: The people of Carthage are afraid, and well they may be. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: The people of Carthage are afraid, and well they may be. Who acts: people. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Story of Regulus., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Story of Regulus., sentence 27

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The people of Carthage are afraid, and well they may be.

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**Who acts:** people · **What happens:** be

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Story of Regulus.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (people), 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:pg18442:28:27
# text = The people of Carthage are afraid, and well they may be.
1	The	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	2	det	_	_
2	people	people	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	6	nsubj	_	_
3	of	of	ADP	IN	_	4	case	_	_
4	Carthage	Carthage	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	nmod	_	_
5	are	be	AUX	VBP	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	6	cop	_	_
6	afraid	afraid	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
7	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	12	punct	_	_
8	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	12	cc	_	_
9	well	well	ADV	RB	Degree=Pos	12	advmod	_	_
10	they	they	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Plur|Person=3|PronType=Prs	12	nsubj	_	_
11	may	may	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	12	aux	_	_
12	be	be	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	6	conj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	6	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | present | the people of Carthage |  |  |  |  | afraid *property* | tree rules |
| 2 | **be** | may | people |  |  |  |  | well *property* | vn exist-47.1 «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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- ← previous: [sentence 26](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/28/26/)
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