---
title: But wise as he was, he had some very queer ways. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: But wise as he was, he had some very queer ways. Who acts: man. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Diogenes the Wise Man., with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Diogenes the Wise Man., sentence 3

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But wise as he was, he had some very queer ways.

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**Who acts:** man · **What happens:** be, have · **To what, where:** queer ways

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Diogenes the Wise Man.. 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.

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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:pg18442:38:3
# text = But wise as he was, he had some very queer ways.
1	But	but	CCONJ	CC	_	2	cc	_	_
2	wise	wise	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	0	root	_	_
3	as	as	SCONJ	IN	_	5	mark	_	_
4	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	5	nsubj	_	_
5	was	be	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	advcl	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	5	punct	_	_
7	he	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	nsubj	_	_
8	had	have	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	advcl	_	_
9	some	some	DET	DT	PronType=Ind	12	det	_	_
10	very	very	ADV	RB	_	11	advmod	_	_
11	queer	queer	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	12	amod	_	_
12	ways	way	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **be** | past | man |  |  |  |  |  | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
| 2 | **have** | past | man | some queer ways |  |  |  |  | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent way=Patient |

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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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