Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, XXVII. Why Mr. Possum Has No Hair on His Tail, sentence 14

Therefore, instead of attempting to justify himself, he pleaded guilty, and promised that he would never do so any more.

Who acts: boy · What happens: attempt, justify, plead, promise, not do · To what, where: boy

This is a sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, XXVII. Why Mr. Possum Has No Hair on His Tail. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (boy), 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	Therefore	therefore	ADV	_	11 pleaded	advmod
2	,	,	PUNCT	_	1 Therefore	punct
3	instead	instead	ADV	ExtPos=SCONJ	5 attempting	mark
4	of	of	ADP	_	3 instead	fixed
5	attempting	attempt	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	11 pleaded	advcl
6	to	to	PART	_	7 justify	mark
7	justify	justify	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	5 attempting	xcomp
8	himself	himself	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs Reflex=Yes	7 justify	obj
9	,	,	PUNCT	_	5 attempting	punct
10	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	11 pleaded	nsubj
11	pleaded	plead	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
12	guilty	guilty	ADJ	Degree=Pos	11 pleaded	xcomp
13	,	,	PUNCT	_	15 promised	punct
14	and	and	CCONJ	_	15 promised	cc
15	promised	promise	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	11 pleaded	conj
16	that	that	SCONJ	_	20 do	mark
17	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	20 do	nsubj
18	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	20 do	aux
19	never	never	ADV	PronType=Neg	20 do	advmod
20	do	do	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	15 promised	ccomp
21	so	so	ADV	_	20 do	advmod
22	any	any	ADV	_	23 more	advmod
23	more	more	ADV	Degree=Cmp	20 do	advmod
24	.	.	PUNCT	_	11 pleaded	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	attempt	gerund	boy not said here			vn try-61.1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality
2	justify speech: other not said to happen	to-infinitive	boy not said here	boy		vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent himself=Topic
3	plead speech: request	past	boy		guilty, therefore property	tree rules
4	promise speech: promise	past	boy not said here			vn promise-37.13 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
5	not do	would	boy			vn act-114-1 «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: «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, Project Gutenberg book 2306 (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/pg2306/30/14/