The Jungle Book, The Jungle Book, part 16, sentence 115

“What did Petersen Sahib mean by the elephant dance?” he said, at last, softly to his mother.

Who acts: Petersen · What happens: do, mean, say · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book, part 16. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Petersen), 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	“	"	PUNCT	_	3 did	punct
2	What	what	PRON	PronType=Int	3 did	nsubj
3	did	do	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	14 said	ccomp
4	Petersen	Petersen	PROPN	Number=Sing	6 mean	nsubj
5	Sahib	Sahib	PROPN	Number=Sing	4 Petersen	flat
6	mean	mean	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	3 did	ccomp
7	by	by	ADP	_	10 dance	case
8	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	10 dance	det
9	elephant	elephant	NOUN	Number=Sing	10 dance	compound
10	dance	dance	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 mean	obl
11	?	?	PUNCT	_	3 did	punct
12	”	"	PUNCT	_	3 did	punct
13	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	14 said	nsubj
14	said	say	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
15	,	,	PUNCT	_	17 last	punct
16	at	at	ADP	_	17 last	case
17	last	last	ADJ	Degree=Pos	14 said	ccomp
18	,	,	PUNCT	_	22 mother	punct
19	softly	softly	ADV	_	22 mother	advmod
20	to	to	ADP	_	22 mother	case
21	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	22 mother	nmod:poss
22	mother	mother	NOUN	Number=Sing	17 last	conj
23	.	.	PUNCT	_	14 said	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	other	roles by
1	do in a quote	past			tree rules
2	mean in a quote	present	Petersen	by the elephant dance	vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent
3	say speech: ask	past	Petersen		vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic

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: «The Jungle Book» by Rudyard Kipling, Project Gutenberg book 236 (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/pg236/16/115/