Alice's word games: puns, parodies and nonsense, sentence 13

«You are old, Father William» is a parody of a serious poem by Robert Southey, in which an old man gives wise advice; in Carroll's version the old man stands on his head and turns back-somersaults.

Who acts: You, old man · What happens: be, give, stand, turn back · To what, where: parody, wise advice, serious poem, version, somersaults · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of the lesson «Alice's word games: puns, parodies and nonsense» of the language 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 (You, old man), 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	«	«	PUNCT	_	4 old	punct
2	You	you	PRON	Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs	4 old	nsubj
3	are	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=2 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	4 old	cop
4	old	old	ADJ	Degree=Pos	11 parody	csubj
5	,	,	PUNCT	_	4 old	punct
6	Father	Father	PROPN	Number=Sing	4 old	vocative
7	William	William	PROPN	Number=Sing	6 Father	flat
8	»	»	PUNCT	_	4 old	punct
9	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	11 parody	cop
10	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	11 parody	det
11	parody	parody	NOUN	Number=Sing	root	root
12	of	of	ADP	_	15 poem	case
13	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	15 poem	det
14	serious	serious	ADJ	Degree=Pos	15 poem	amod
15	poem	poem	NOUN	Number=Sing	11 parody	nmod
16	by	by	ADP	_	17 Robert	case
17	Robert	Robert	PROPN	Number=Sing	15 poem	nmod
18	Southey	Southey	PROPN	Number=Sing	17 Robert	flat
19	,	,	PUNCT	_	25 gives	punct
20	in	in	ADP	_	21 which	case
21	which	which	PRON	PronType=Rel	25 gives	obl
22	an	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	24 man	det
23	old	old	ADJ	Degree=Pos	24 man	amod
24	man	man	NOUN	Number=Sing	25 gives	nsubj
25	gives	give	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	15 poem	acl:relcl
26	wise	wise	ADJ	Degree=Pos	27 advice	amod
27	advice	advice	NOUN	Number=Sing	25 gives	obj
28	;	;	PUNCT	_	32 version	punct
29	in	in	ADP	_	32 version	case
30	Carroll	Carroll	PROPN	Number=Sing	32 version	nmod:poss
31	's	's	PART	_	30 Carroll	case
32	version	version	NOUN	Number=Sing	36 stands	obl
33	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	35 man	det
34	old	old	ADJ	Degree=Pos	35 man	amod
35	man	man	NOUN	Number=Sing	36 stands	nsubj
36	stands	stand	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	11 parody	parataxis
37	on	on	ADP	_	39 head	case
38	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	39 head	nmod:poss
39	head	head	NOUN	Number=Sing	36 stands	obl
40	and	and	CCONJ	_	41 turns	cc
41	turns	turn	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	36 stands	conj
42	back	back	ADV	_	44 somersaults	advmod
43	-	-	PUNCT	_	42 back	punct
44	somersaults	somersault	NOUN	Number=Plur	41 turns	obj
45	.	.	PUNCT	_	11 parody	punct

Pragmatics

No stored speech act for this sentence.

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	is in a quote	present	You			Father vocative; old property	tree rules
2	is a	present		a parody		of a serious poem by Robert	tree rules
3	give	present	a old man	wise advice	a serious poem by Robert		vn give-13.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent advice=Theme
4	stand	present	the old man		Carroll's version	on parody's head	vn assuming_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent in version=Location
5	turn back	present	the old man not said here	somersaults			vn banish-10.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent somersault=Theme

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:language:041-alice-s-word-games-puns-parodies-and-nonsense.lesson:13.

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): R8-pos-agree ×1. 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/language/41-alice-s-word-games-puns-parodies-and-nonsense/13/