Just so stories, How the Alphabet Was Made, sentence 146

We must draw a spotty snake that hisses sh-sh, and we’ll play that the plain snake only hisses ssss.’

Who acts: We, spotty snake, plain snake · What happens: draw, hiss, play · To what, where: spotty snake, sh sh, ssss

This is a sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, How the Alphabet Was Made. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (We, spotty snake, plain snake), 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	We	we	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	3 draw	nsubj
2	must	must	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	3 draw	aux
3	draw	draw	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	root	root
4	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	6 snake	det
5	spotty	spotty	ADJ	Degree=Pos	6 snake	amod
6	snake	snake	NOUN	Number=Sing	3 draw	obj
7	that	that	PRON	PronType=Rel	8 hisses	nsubj
8	hisses	hiss	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	6 snake	acl:relcl
9	sh	sh	NOUN	Number=Sing	11 sh	compound
10	-	-	PUNCT	_	9 sh	punct
11	sh	sh	NOUN	Number=Sing	8 hisses	obj
12	,	,	PUNCT	_	16 play	punct
13	and	and	CCONJ	_	16 play	cc
14	we	we	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	16 play	nsubj
15	’ll	will	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	16 play	aux
16	play	play	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	3 draw	conj
17	that	that	SCONJ	_	22 hisses	mark
18	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	20 snake	det
19	plain	plain	ADJ	Degree=Pos	20 snake	amod
20	snake	snake	NOUN	Number=Sing	22 hisses	nsubj
21	only	only	ADV	_	22 hisses	advmod
22	hisses	hiss	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	16 play	advcl
23	ssss	ssss	NOUN	Number=Sing	22 hisses	obj
24	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 draw	punct
25	’	'	PUNCT	_	3 draw	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	roles by
1	draw	must	We	a spotty snake	vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent snake=Theme
2	hiss	present	a spotty snake	sh sh	vn manner_speaking-37.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent sh=Topic
3	play	future	we		vn performance-26.7-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent
4	hiss	present	the plain snake	ssss	vn manner_speaking-37.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent ssss=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: «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, Project Gutenberg book 2781 (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/pg2781/10/146/