The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 17, sentence 53
Why should I not build a raft and trust myself to its swiftly flowing waters?
Who acts: I · What happens: not build, flow · To what, where: raft
This is a sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 17. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (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 | Why | why | ADV | PronType=Int | 5 build | advmod |
| 2 | should | should | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 5 build | aux |
| 3 | I | I | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 5 build | nsubj |
| 4 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 5 build | advmod |
| 5 | build | build | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | root | root |
| 6 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 7 raft | det |
| 7 | raft | raft | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 build | obj |
| 8 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 9 trust | cc |
| 9 | trust | trust | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 raft | conj |
| 10 | myself | myself | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Emp Reflex=Yes | 5 build | obl:unmarked |
| 11 | to | to | ADP | _ | 15 waters | case |
| 12 | its | its | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 15 waters | nmod:poss |
| 13 | swiftly | swiftly | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 15 waters | amod |
| 14 | flowing | flow | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 15 waters | amod |
| 15 | waters | water | NOUN | Number=Plur | 5 build | obl |
| 16 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 5 build | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | not build | should | I | a raft and trust | to trust's swiftly flowing waters; myself obl:unmarked | vn build-26.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent raft=Product | |||
| 2 | flow | gerund | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=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.
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/pg128/17/53/