Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Other Wise Men of Gotham., sentence 45

"Why, master," they answered, "there is a cuck-oo in this field, and we are building a wall around it so as to keep the bird from straying away."

Who acts: wits, cuck oo, we · What happens: answer, be, build, keep, stray away · To what, where: wall, bird · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Other Wise Men of Gotham.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (wits, cuck oo, we), 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	"	"	PUNCT	_	2 Why	punct
2	Why	why	ADV	PronType=Int	root	root
3	,	,	PUNCT	_	4 master	punct
4	master	master	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 Why	vocative
5	,	,	PUNCT	_	8 answered	punct
6	"	"	PUNCT	_	8 answered	punct
7	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	8 answered	nsubj
8	answered	answer	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	2 Why	conj
9	,	,	PUNCT	_	12 is	punct
10	"	"	PUNCT	_	12 is	punct
11	there	there	PRON	PronType=Dem	12 is	expl
12	is	be	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	8 answered	ccomp
13	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	16 oo	det
14	cuck	cuck	NOUN	Number=Sing	16 oo	compound
15	-	-	PUNCT	_	14 cuck	punct
16	oo	oo	NOUN	Number=Sing	12 is	nsubj
17	in	in	ADP	_	19 field	case
18	this	this	DET	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	19 field	det
19	field	field	NOUN	Number=Sing	16 oo	nmod
20	,	,	PUNCT	_	24 building	punct
21	and	and	CCONJ	_	24 building	cc
22	we	we	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	24 building	nsubj
23	are	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=1 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	24 building	aux
24	building	build	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	8 answered	advcl
25	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	26 wall	det
26	wall	wall	NOUN	Number=Sing	24 building	obj
27	around	around	ADP	_	28 it	case
28	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	24 building	obl
29	so	so	ADV	_	30 as	advmod
30	as	as	ADV	_	24 building	advmod
31	to	to	PART	_	32 keep	mark
32	keep	keep	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	24 building	advcl
33	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	34 bird	det
34	bird	bird	NOUN	Number=Sing	32 keep	obj
35	from	from	SCONJ	_	36 straying	mark
36	straying	stray	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	32 keep	advcl
37	away	away	ADV	_	36 straying	advmod
38	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 Why	punct
39	"	"	PUNCT	_	2 Why	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	answer speech: assert	past	wits = wit				tree rules
2	be in a quote	present	a cuck oo in this field		there		vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
3	build in a quote	present · progressive	we	a wall	wall		vn build-26.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent wall=Product
4	keep in a quote	to-infinitive	we not said here	the bird			vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent bird=Theme
5	stray away in a quote	gerund	we not said here			away property	vn run-51.3.2 «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: «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/pg18442/15/45/