The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 15, sentence 88

Though they chattered incessantly I could not understand a word they said, nor did they heed when I spoke to them.

Who acts: blacks, I · What happens: chatter, not understand, say, heed, speak · To what, where: word, blacks · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 15. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (blacks, I), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	Though	though	SCONJ	_	3 chattered	mark
2	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	3 chattered	nsubj
3	chattered	chatter	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	8 understand	advcl
4	incessantly	incessantly	ADV	_	3 chattered	advmod
5	I	I	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	8 understand	nsubj
6	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	8 understand	aux
7	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	8 understand	advmod
8	understand	understand	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	root	root
9	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	10 word	det
10	word	word	NOUN	Number=Sing	8 understand	obj
11	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	12 said	nsubj
12	said	say	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	10 word	acl:relcl
13	,	,	PUNCT	_	17 heed	punct
14	nor	nor	CCONJ	Polarity=Neg	17 heed	cc
15	did	do	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	17 heed	aux
16	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	17 heed	nsubj
17	heed	heed	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	12 said	ccomp
18	when	when	ADV	PronType=Int	20 spoke	advmod
19	I	I	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	20 spoke	nsubj
20	spoke	speak	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	17 heed	advcl
21	to	to	ADP	_	22 them	case
22	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	20 spoke	obl
23	.	.	PUNCT	_	8 understand	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	other	roles by
1	chatter	past	blacks = black			incessantly property	vn animal_sounds-38 «NP V»: agent=Agent
2	not understand	could	I	a word			vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer word=Stimulus
3	say speech: assert	past	blacks = black	a word not said here			tree rules
4	heed	past · do-support	blacks = black				vn abide_by-93.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent
5	speak speech: other	past	I		blacks = black		vn talk-37.5 «NP V PP.co-agent»: agent=Agent to they=Co-Agent

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.

Text: «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 128 (public domain in the USA). Tree: Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. Frames: Mova's frames reader (prag), the chapter read in order.

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg128/15/88/