Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling), 5: The Elephant's Child, part 1 (What does the Crocodile have for dinner?), sentence 7

He asked his tall aunt the Ostrich about her tail-feathers, his tall uncle the Giraffe why his skin was spotty, his broad aunt the Hippopotamus why her eyes were red, and his hairy uncle the Baboon why melons tasted just so; each one spanked him.

Who acts: Child, tall uncle, skin, broad aunt, eyes, hairy uncle · What happens: ask, giraffe, be, hippopotamus, baboon, taste · To what, where: tall aunt, Child

This is a sentence of the lesson «Just So Stories (Rudyard Kipling), 5: The Elephant's Child, part 1 (What does the Crocodile have for dinner?)» of the books course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Child, tall uncle, skin, broad aunt), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

The tree

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	He	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 asked	nsubj
2	asked	ask	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	5 aunt	nmod:poss
4	tall	tall	ADJ	Degree=Pos	5 aunt	amod
5	aunt	aunt	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 asked	iobj
6	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	7 Ostrich	det
7	Ostrich	ostrich	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 aunt	appos
8	about	about	ADP	_	12 feathers	case
9	her	her	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	12 feathers	nmod:poss
10	tail	tail	NOUN	Number=Sing	12 feathers	compound
11	-	-	PUNCT	_	10 tail	punct
12	feathers	feather	NOUN	Number=Plur	2 asked	obl
13	,	,	PUNCT	_	16 uncle	punct
14	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	16 uncle	nmod:poss
15	tall	tall	ADJ	Degree=Pos	16 uncle	amod
16	uncle	uncle	NOUN	Number=Sing	18 Giraffe	nsubj
17	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	18 Giraffe	det
18	Giraffe	giraffe	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 asked	obl
19	why	why	ADV	PronType=Int	23 spotty	advmod
20	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	21 skin	nmod:poss
21	skin	skin	NOUN	Number=Sing	23 spotty	nsubj
22	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	23 spotty	cop
23	spotty	spotty	ADJ	Degree=Pos	18 Giraffe	parataxis
24	,	,	PUNCT	_	27 aunt	punct
25	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	27 aunt	nmod:poss
26	broad	broad	ADJ	Degree=Pos	27 aunt	amod
27	aunt	aunt	NOUN	Number=Sing	29 Hippopotamus	nsubj
28	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	29 Hippopotamus	det
29	Hippopotamus	hippopotamus	NOUN	Number=Sing	23 spotty	conj
30	why	why	ADV	PronType=Int	34 red	advmod
31	her	her	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	32 eyes	nmod:poss
32	eyes	eye	NOUN	Number=Plur	34 red	nsubj
33	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	34 red	cop
34	red	red	ADJ	Degree=Pos	29 Hippopotamus	acl:relcl
35	,	,	PUNCT	_	41 Baboon	punct
36	and	and	CCONJ	_	41 Baboon	cc
37	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	39 uncle	nmod:poss
38	hairy	hairy	ADJ	Degree=Pos	39 uncle	amod
39	uncle	uncle	NOUN	Number=Sing	41 Baboon	nsubj
40	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	41 Baboon	det
41	Baboon	baboon	NOUN	Number=Sing	18 Giraffe	conj
42	why	why	ADV	PronType=Int	44 tasted	advmod
43	melons	melon	NOUN	Number=Plur	44 tasted	nsubj
44	tasted	taste	VERB	Mood=Ind Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	41 Baboon	acl:relcl
45	just	just	ADV	_	46 so	advmod
46	so	so	ADV	_	44 tasted	advmod
47	;	;	PUNCT	_	50 spanked	punct
48	each	each	DET	PronType=Tot	49 one	det
49	one	one	NOUN	Number=Sing	50 spanked	nsubj
50	spanked	spank	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	2 asked	parataxis
51	him	he	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	50 spanked	obj
52	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 asked	punct

Pragmatics

No stored speech act for this sentence.

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	other	roles by
1	ask speech: ask	past	Child		Child's tall aunt	about Kipling's tail feathers	vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP PP.topic»: agent=Agent aunt=Recipient about feather=Topic
2	giraffe		Child's tall uncle				tree rules
3	is	past	Child's skin			spotty property	tree rules
4	hippopotamus		Child's broad aunt				tree rules
5	is	past	Kipling's eyes			red property	tree rules
6	baboon		Child's hairy uncle				tree rules
7	taste	past	melons				vn stimulus_subject-30.4 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Stimulus
8	spank	past	each one	Child			vn spank-18.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Patient

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.

Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, mova-school-agreed-en.conllu) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence school:books:079-justso-elephants-child-1.lesson:7.

The tree: Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R6-punct-agree ×2. The frames are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (prag) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.

See the release 0.4.

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/79-justso-elephants-child-1/7/