Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, XXXI. a Plantation Witch, sentence 26
The argument seemed unanswerable, and the little boy asked, in a confidential tone:
Who acts: argument, little boy · What happens: seem, ask · To what, where: confidential tone
This is a sentence of «Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings» by Joel Chandler Harris, XXXI. a Plantation Witch. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (argument, little 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 | The | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 2 argument | det |
| 2 | argument | argument | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 seemed | nsubj |
| 3 | seemed | seem | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | unanswerable | unanswerable | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 3 seemed | xcomp |
| 5 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 10 asked | punct |
| 6 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 10 asked | cc |
| 7 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 9 boy | det |
| 8 | little | little | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 9 boy | amod |
| 9 | boy | boy | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 asked | nsubj |
| 10 | asked | ask | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 3 seemed | parataxis |
| 11 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 15 tone | punct |
| 12 | in | in | ADP | _ | 15 tone | case |
| 13 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 15 tone | det |
| 14 | confidential | confidential | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 15 tone | amod |
| 15 | tone | tone | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 asked | obl |
| 16 | : | : | PUNCT | _ | 3 seemed | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | seem | past | the argument | unanswerable property | vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Theme | ||||
| 2 | ask speech: ask | past | the little boy | a confidential tone | vn inquire-37.1.2 «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/pg2306/34/26/