By employing multiple-scale expansion techniques, the diffraction of sinusoidally-modulated nonlinear Stokes waves by a stationary thin wedge has been studied within the framework of potential theory. It is found that the evolution of diffracted waves can be described by the Zakharov equation to the leading order and it can be replaced by the cubic $Schrddot{o}dinger$ equation with an additional linear term for stable modulations. Computations are made for the cubic $Schrddot{o}dinger$ equation with different values of nonlinear and dispersion parameters. Numerical results well reflect the experimental findings in the amplitude and width of generated stem waves. It is numerically confirmed that the nonlinearity dominates the wave field, while the dispersion hardly affects the wave evolution, and stem waves are likely to be formed for steep incident waves in the case of stable sinusoidal modulations.