---
title: Wilhelm went down to find out what was the matter. — Fifty Famous Stories Retold · tree and pragmatics
description: Wilhelm went down to find out what was the matter. Who acts: Wilhelm. A sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Antonio Canova., 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/pg18442/54/172/)

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# Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Antonio Canova., sentence 172

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Wilhelm went down to find out what was the matter.

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**Who acts:** Wilhelm · **What happens:** go down, find out, be · **To what, where:** matter · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Antonio Canova.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Wilhelm), 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:pg18442:54:172
# text = Wilhelm went down to find out what was the matter.
1	Wilhelm	Wilhelm	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
2	went	go	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	down	down	ADV	RB	_	2	advmod	_	_
4	to	to	PART	TO	_	5	mark	_	_
5	find	find	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	2	advcl	_	_
6	out	out	ADP	RP	_	5	compound:prt	_	_
7	what	what	PRON	WP	PronType=Int	10	nsubj	_	_
8	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	matter	matter	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	5	ccomp	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **go down** | past | Wilhelm |  |  |  |  | down *property* | vn calibratable\_cos-45.6.1-1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute |
| 2 | **find out** | to-infinitive | Wilhelm *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn learn-14-2-1 «NP V PP.topic»: agent=Agent |
| 3 | **is a** | past |  | the matter |  |  |  |  | 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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- ← previous: [sentence 171](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/54/171/)
- next →: [sentence 173](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/54/173/)
- ↑ back to [Antonio Canova.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg18442/54/)

