Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Story of Cincinnatus., sentence 25
We tried to come back; but they had blocked up the way on this side of us too.
Who acts: We, mountains · What happens: try, come back, block up · To what, where: way, side
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 (We, mountains), 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 | We | we | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs | 2 tried | nsubj |
| 2 | tried | try | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | to | to | PART | _ | 4 come | mark |
| 4 | come | come | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 2 tried | xcomp |
| 5 | back | back | ADV | _ | 4 come | advmod |
| 6 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 2 tried | punct |
| 7 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 10 blocked | cc |
| 8 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 10 blocked | nsubj |
| 9 | had | have | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 10 blocked | aux |
| 10 | blocked | block | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part | 2 tried | conj |
| 11 | up | up | ADP | _ | 10 blocked | compound:prt |
| 12 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 13 way | det |
| 13 | way | way | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 blocked | obl:unmarked |
| 14 | on | on | ADP | _ | 16 side | case |
| 15 | this | this | DET | Number=Sing PronType=Dem | 16 side | det |
| 16 | side | side | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 blocked | obl |
| 17 | of | of | ADP | _ | 18 us | case |
| 18 | us | we | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs | 16 side | nmod |
| 19 | too | too | ADV | _ | 10 blocked | advmod |
| 20 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 tried | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | try | past | We | vn try-61.1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality | |||||
| 2 | come back not said to happen | to-infinitive | We not said here | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | |||||
| 3 | block up | past · perfect | mountains = mountain | the way | this side of us | vn concealment-16 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent on side=Location |
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/pg18442/27/25/