Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Blind Men and the Elephant., sentence 20

The fifth was a very tall man, and he chanced to take hold of the elephant's ear. "

Who acts: fifth, fourth · What happens: be, chance, take, hold · To what, where: tall man, hold, ear

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 (fifth, fourth), 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	The	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	2 fifth	det
2	fifth	fifth	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 man	nsubj
3	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	7 man	cop
4	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	7 man	det
5	very	very	ADV	_	6 tall	advmod
6	tall	tall	ADJ	Degree=Pos	7 man	amod
7	man	man	NOUN	Number=Sing	root	root
8	,	,	PUNCT	_	11 chanced	punct
9	and	and	CCONJ	_	11 chanced	cc
10	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	11 chanced	nsubj
11	chanced	chance	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	7 man	acl:relcl
12	to	to	PART	_	13 take	mark
13	take	take	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	11 chanced	xcomp
14	hold	hold	NOUN	Number=Sing	13 take	obj
15	of	of	ADP	_	19 ear	case
16	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	17 elephant	det
17	elephant	elephant	NOUN	Number=Sing	19 ear	nmod:poss
18	's	's	PART	_	17 elephant	case
19	ear	ear	NOUN	Number=Sing	14 hold	nmod
20	.	.	PUNCT	_	7 man	punct
21	"	"	PUNCT	_	7 man	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	roles by
1	is a	past	the fifth	a tall man	tree rules
2	chance	past	fourth	a tall man not said here	tree rules
3	take	to-infinitive	fourth not said here	hold of the elephant's ear	vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent hold=Theme
4	hold			the elephant's ear	nom hold «act transitive»: of=patient

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/pg18442/46/20/