Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, XXVII. Why Mr. Possum Has No Hair on His Tail, sentence 17

Whenever the old man had occasion to reprimand the little boy--and the occasions were frequent--he would relapse into a dignified but stubborn silence.

Who acts: old man, occasions, man · What happens: have, reprimand, be, relapse · To what, where: occasion, little boy, dignified silence

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 (old man, occasions, man), 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	Whenever	whenever	ADV	PronType=Rel	root	root
2	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	4 man	det
3	old	old	ADJ	Degree=Pos	4 man	amod
4	man	man	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 had	nsubj
5	had	have	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	1 Whenever	advcl:relcl
6	occasion	occasion	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 had	obj
7	to	to	PART	_	8 reprimand	mark
8	reprimand	reprimand	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	6 occasion	acl
9	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	11 boy	det
10	little	little	ADJ	Degree=Pos	11 boy	amod
11	boy	boy	NOUN	Number=Sing	8 reprimand	obj
12	--	--	PUNCT	_	17 frequent	punct
13	and	and	CCONJ	_	17 frequent	cc
14	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	15 occasions	det
15	occasions	occasion	NOUN	Number=Plur	17 frequent	nsubj
16	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	17 frequent	cop
17	frequent	frequent	ADJ	Degree=Pos	1 Whenever	advcl:relcl
18	--	--	PUNCT	_	21 relapse	punct
19	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	21 relapse	nsubj
20	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	21 relapse	aux
21	relapse	relapse	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	17 frequent	conj
22	into	into	ADP	_	27 silence	case
23	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	27 silence	det
24	dignified	dignified	ADJ	Degree=Pos	27 silence	amod
25	but	but	CCONJ	_	26 stubborn	cc
26	stubborn	stubborn	ADJ	Degree=Pos	24 dignified	conj
27	silence	silence	NOUN	Number=Sing	21 relapse	obl
28	.	.	PUNCT	_	1 Whenever	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	have	past	the old man	occasion			vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent occasion=Patient
2	reprimand	to-infinitive	the old man not said here	the little boy			tree rules
3	is	past	the occasions			frequent property	tree rules
4	relapse	would	man		a dignified silence		tree rules

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/pg2306/30/17/