Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Diogenes the Wise Man., sentence 24

"Say what you will; if I were not Alexander, I would like to be Diogenes."

Who acts: you, Diogenes · What happens: say, not be, like, be · To what, where: Alexander, Diogenes · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Diogenes the Wise Man.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, Diogenes), 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 Say	punct
2	Say	say	VERB	Mood=Imp VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	what	what	PRON	PronType=Int	2 Say	obj
4	you	you	PRON	Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs	5 will	nsubj
5	will	will	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	3 what	acl:relcl
6	;	;	PUNCT	_	11 Alexander	punct
7	if	if	SCONJ	_	11 Alexander	mark
8	I	I	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	11 Alexander	nsubj
9	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	11 Alexander	cop
10	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	11 Alexander	advmod
11	Alexander	Alexander	PROPN	Number=Sing	2 Say	obl
12	,	,	PUNCT	_	15 like	punct
13	I	I	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	15 like	nsubj
14	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	15 like	aux
15	like	like	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	2 Say	conj
16	to	to	PART	_	18 Diogenes	mark
17	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	18 Diogenes	cop
18	Diogenes	Diogenes	PROPN	Number=Sing	15 like	obj
19	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 Say	punct
20	"	"	PUNCT	_	2 Say	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	roles by
1	say speech: assert in a quote	imperative	you not said here		vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent what=Topic
2	not is a a condition, not said to happen, in a quote	past	Diogenes	Alexander	tree rules
3	like in a quote	would	Diogenes		vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S_INF»: agent=Pivot
4	is a in a quote	to-infinitive		Diogenes	tree rules

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.

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