Fifty Famous Stories Retold, IV. the Cat., sentence 2
The people had never seen any white men before, and they came in great crowds to buy the fine things with which the ship was loaded.
Who acts: people · What happens: not see, come in, buy, load · To what, where: white men, great crowds, fine things, ship
This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, IV. the Cat.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (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 | The | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 2 people | det |
| 2 | people | people | NOUN | Number=Plur | 5 seen | nsubj |
| 3 | had | have | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 5 seen | aux |
| 4 | never | never | ADV | PronType=Neg | 5 seen | advmod |
| 5 | seen | see | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part | root | root |
| 6 | any | any | DET | PronType=Ind | 8 men | det |
| 7 | white | white | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 8 men | amod |
| 8 | men | man | NOUN | Number=Plur | 5 seen | obj |
| 9 | before | before | ADV | _ | 5 seen | advmod |
| 10 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 13 came | punct |
| 11 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 13 came | cc |
| 12 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 13 came | nsubj |
| 13 | came | come | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 5 seen | conj |
| 14 | in | in | ADV | _ | 13 came | advmod |
| 15 | great | great | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 16 crowds | amod |
| 16 | crowds | crowd | NOUN | Number=Plur | 13 came | obj |
| 17 | to | to | PART | _ | 18 buy | mark |
| 18 | buy | buy | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 13 came | advcl |
| 19 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 21 things | det |
| 20 | fine | fine | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 21 things | amod |
| 21 | things | thing | NOUN | Number=Plur | 18 buy | obj |
| 22 | with | with | ADP | _ | 23 which | case |
| 23 | which | which | PRON | PronType=Rel | 27 loaded | obl |
| 24 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 25 ship | det |
| 25 | ship | ship | NOUN | Number=Sing | 27 loaded | nsubj:pass |
| 26 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 27 loaded | aux:pass |
| 27 | loaded | load | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 21 things | acl:relcl |
| 28 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 5 seen | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | not see | past · perfect | the people | any white men | before property | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer man=Stimulus | |||
| 2 | come in | past | people | great crowds | vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location crowd=Theme | ||||
| 3 | buy | to-infinitive | people not said here | the fine things | vn accept-77.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent thing=Theme | ||||
| 4 | load | past · passive | the ship | with the fine things | vn spray-9.7-2 «NP V NP.destination PP.theme»: subject=Destination with which=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/pg18442/52/2/