Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Black Douglas., sentence 33
But the English were so taken by surprise that they could not do much.
Who acts: surprise, soldiers · What happens: take, not do · To what, where: English
This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Black Douglas.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (surprise, soldiers), 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 | But | but | CCONJ | _ | 6 taken | cc |
| 2 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 3 English | det |
| 3 | English | English | PROPN | Number=Sing | 6 taken | nsubj:pass |
| 4 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 6 taken | aux:pass |
| 5 | so | so | ADV | _ | 6 taken | advmod |
| 6 | taken | take | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | root | root |
| 7 | by | by | ADP | _ | 8 surprise | case |
| 8 | surprise | surprise | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 taken | obl |
| 9 | that | that | SCONJ | _ | 13 do | mark |
| 10 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 13 do | nsubj |
| 11 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 13 do | aux |
| 12 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 13 do | advmod |
| 13 | do | do | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 6 taken | advcl |
| 14 | much | much | ADV | _ | 13 do | advmod |
| 15 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 6 taken | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | take | past · passive | surprise | the English | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP ADVP»: agent=Instrument subject=Destination | ||||
| 2 | not do | could | soldiers = soldier | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=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: «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Project Gutenberg book 18442 (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/pg18442/13/33/