Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Blind Men and the Elephant., sentence 1

There were once six blind men who stood by the road-side every day, and begged from the people who passed.

Who acts: six blind men, people · What happens: be, stand, beg, pass

This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Blind Men and the Elephant.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (six blind men, people), 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	There	there	PRON	PronType=Dem	2 were	expl
2	were	be	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	once	once	ADV	NumForm=Word NumType=Mult	2 were	advmod
4	six	six	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	6 men	nummod
5	blind	blind	ADJ	Degree=Pos	6 men	amod
6	men	man	NOUN	Number=Plur	2 were	nsubj
7	who	who	PRON	PronType=Rel	8 stood	nsubj
8	stood	stand	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	6 men	acl:relcl
9	by	by	ADP	_	13 side	case
10	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	13 side	det
11	road	road	NOUN	Number=Sing	13 side	compound
12	-	-	PUNCT	_	11 road	punct
13	side	side	NOUN	Number=Sing	8 stood	obl
14	every	every	DET	PronType=Tot	15 day	det
15	day	day	NOUN	Number=Sing	8 stood	obl:unmarked
16	,	,	PUNCT	_	18 begged	punct
17	and	and	CCONJ	_	18 begged	cc
18	begged	beg	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	8 stood	conj
19	from	from	ADP	_	21 people	case
20	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	21 people	det
21	people	people	NOUN	Number=Plur	18 begged	obl
22	who	who	PRON	PronType=Rel	23 passed	nsubj
23	passed	pass	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	21 people	acl:relcl
24	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 were	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	where	when	other	roles by
1	be	past	six blind men	there		once property	vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
2	stand	past	six blind men		day	by the road side	vn assuming_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent by side=Location
3	beg speech: request	participle	six blind men not said here			from the people	vn beg-58.2-1-1 «NP V PP.Topic»: agent=Agent
4	pass	past	the people				vn occur-48.3-1 «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/pg18442/46/1/