Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Story of Cincinnatus., sentence 24
They had blocked up the way; and the pass was so narrow that we could not fight.
Who acts: mountains, pass, we · What happens: block up, be, not fight · To what, where: way
This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Story of Cincinnatus.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (mountains, pass, 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 | They | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 3 blocked | nsubj |
| 2 | had | have | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 3 blocked | aux |
| 3 | blocked | block | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part | root | root |
| 4 | up | up | ADP | _ | 3 blocked | compound:prt |
| 5 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 6 way | det |
| 6 | way | way | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 blocked | obl:unmarked |
| 7 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 13 narrow | punct |
| 8 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 13 narrow | cc |
| 9 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 10 pass | det |
| 10 | pass | pass | NOUN | Number=Sing | 13 narrow | nsubj |
| 11 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 13 narrow | cop |
| 12 | so | so | ADV | _ | 13 narrow | advmod |
| 13 | narrow | narrow | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 3 blocked | conj |
| 14 | that | that | SCONJ | _ | 18 fight | mark |
| 15 | we | we | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs | 18 fight | nsubj |
| 16 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 18 fight | aux |
| 17 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 18 fight | advmod |
| 18 | fight | fight | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 13 narrow | advcl |
| 19 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 blocked | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | block up | past · perfect | mountains = mountain | the way | vn forbid-64.4-1 «NP V S_ING»: agent=Causer | ||||
| 2 | is | past | the pass | narrow property | tree rules | ||||
| 3 | not fight | could | we | vn battle-36.4-1 «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/pg18442/27/24/