Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Blind Men and the Elephant., sentence 3
It so happened one morning that an el-e-phant was driven down the road where they stood.
Who acts: It, phants · What happens: happen, drive down, stand · To what, where: e phant
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 (It, phants), 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 | It | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 3 happened | nsubj |
| 2 | so | so | ADV | _ | 3 happened | advmod |
| 3 | happened | happen | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | one | one | NUM | NumForm=Word NumType=Card | 5 morning | nummod |
| 5 | morning | morning | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 happened | obl:unmarked |
| 6 | that | that | SCONJ | _ | 14 driven | mark |
| 7 | an | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 12 phant | det |
| 8 | el | el | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 e | compound |
| 9 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 8 el | punct |
| 10 | e | e | NOUN | Number=Sing | 12 phant | compound |
| 11 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 10 e | punct |
| 12 | phant | phant | NOUN | Number=Sing | 14 driven | nsubj:pass |
| 13 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 14 driven | aux:pass |
| 14 | driven | drive | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 3 happened | advcl |
| 15 | down | down | ADP | _ | 17 road | case |
| 16 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 17 road | det |
| 17 | road | road | NOUN | Number=Sing | 14 driven | obl |
| 18 | where | where | ADV | PronType=Rel | 20 stood | advmod |
| 19 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 20 stood | nsubj |
| 20 | stood | stand | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 17 road | acl:relcl |
| 21 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 happened | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | happen | past | It | morning | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | ||||
| 2 | drive down | past · passive | a e phant | down the road | vn put_direction-9.4 «NP V NP ADVP»: subject=Theme road=Destination | ||||
| 3 | stand | past | phants = phant | vn assuming_position-50 «NP V»: agent=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/pg18442/46/3/