Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Blind Men and the Elephant., sentence 4

When they were told that the great beast was before them, they asked the driver to let him stop so that they might see him.

Who acts: great beast, phants, driver · What happens: tell, be, ask, let, stop, see · To what, where: phants, driver · Speech: someone speaks here

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 (great beast, phants, driver), 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	When	when	SCONJ	_	4 told	mark
2	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	4 told	nsubj:pass
3	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 told	aux:pass
4	told	tell	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	14 asked	advcl
5	that	that	SCONJ	_	11 them	mark
6	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	8 beast	det
7	great	great	ADJ	Degree=Pos	8 beast	amod
8	beast	beast	NOUN	Number=Sing	11 them	nsubj
9	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	11 them	cop
10	before	before	ADP	_	11 them	case
11	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	4 told	iobj
12	,	,	PUNCT	_	4 told	punct
13	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	14 asked	nsubj
14	asked	ask	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
15	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	16 driver	det
16	driver	driver	NOUN	Number=Sing	14 asked	obj
17	to	to	PART	_	18 let	mark
18	let	let	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	16 driver	acl
19	him	he	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	18 let	obj
20	stop	stop	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	18 let	xcomp
21	so	so	SCONJ	ExtPos=SCONJ	25 see	mark
22	that	that	SCONJ	_	21 so	fixed
23	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	25 see	nsubj
24	might	might	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	25 see	aux
25	see	see	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	20 stop	advcl
26	him	he	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	25 see	obj
27	.	.	PUNCT	_	14 asked	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	when	roles by
1	tell speech: assert	past · passive		phants = phant			vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: subject=Recipient they=Topic
2	is	past	the great beast			before men = man	tree rules
3	ask speech: ask	past	phants = phant		the driver		vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent driver=Recipient
4	let	to-infinitive	phants = phant not said here	driver			tree rules
5	stop	infinitive	driver not said here				vn stop-55.4-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality
6	see	might	phants = phant	driver			vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer he=Stimulus

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/pg18442/46/4/