---
title: Why was he so great? — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: Why was he so great? Who acts: man. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Julius Caesar., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/32/3/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Fifty Famous Stories Retold](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/) / [Julius Caesar.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/32/) / 3

# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Julius Caesar., sentence 3

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
Why was he so great?

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** man · **What happens:** be

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Julius Caesar.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**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:pg18442:32:3
# text = Why was he so great?
1	Why	why	ADV	WRB	PronType=Int	5	advmod	_	_
2	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	5	cop	_	_
3	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
4	so	so	ADV	RB	_	5	advmod	_	_
5	great	great	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	?	?	PUNCT	.	_	5	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **is** | past | man |  |  |  |  | great *property* | tree rules |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/32/2/)
- next →: [sentence 4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/32/4/)
- ↑ back to [Julius Caesar.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/32/)