Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Sword of Damocles., sentence 18

What was it that was dangling above him, with its point almost touching his head?

Who acts: ceiling · What happens: dangle, touch, point · To what, where: head

This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Sword of Damocles.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (ceiling), 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	What	what	PRON	PronType=Int	6 dangling	nsubj
2	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	6 dangling	aux
3	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	6 dangling	nsubj
4	that	that	PRON	PronType=Rel	6 dangling	nsubj
5	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	6 dangling	aux
6	dangling	dangle	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	root	root
7	above	above	ADP	_	8 him	case
8	him	he	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	6 dangling	obl
9	,	,	PUNCT	_	12 point	punct
10	with	with	ADP	_	12 point	case
11	its	its	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	12 point	nmod:poss
12	point	point	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 dangling	obl
13	almost	almost	ADV	_	14 touching	advmod
14	touching	touch	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	12 point	nmod
15	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	16 head	nmod:poss
16	head	head	NOUN	Number=Sing	14 touching	obj
17	?	?	PUNCT	_	6 dangling	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	dangle	past · progressive			above Damocles; with ceiling's point	vn spatial_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme above he=Location
2	touch	gerund		Damocles's head	almost property	vn contiguous_location-47.8-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Theme head=Co-Theme
3	point		ceiling			nom point «cognition transitive»: poss=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/pg18442/33/18/