Just so stories, How the Alphabet Was Made, sentence 147
‘I couldn’t be sure how to put in the spots,’ said Taffy.
Who acts: I, Taffy · What happens: not be, put, say · To what, where: spots · Speech: someone speaks here
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 (I, Taffy), 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 | _ | 6 sure | punct |
| 2 | I | I | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 6 sure | nsubj |
| 3 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 6 sure | aux |
| 4 | n’t | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 6 sure | advmod |
| 5 | be | be | AUX | VerbForm=Inf | 6 sure | cop |
| 6 | sure | sure | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 15 said | ccomp |
| 7 | how | how | ADV | PronType=Int | 9 put | advmod |
| 8 | to | to | PART | _ | 9 put | mark |
| 9 | put | put | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 6 sure | ccomp |
| 10 | in | in | ADP | _ | 12 spots | case |
| 11 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 12 spots | det |
| 12 | spots | spot | NOUN | Number=Plur | 9 put | obl |
| 13 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 6 sure | punct |
| 14 | ’ | ' | PUNCT | _ | 6 sure | punct |
| 15 | said | say | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 16 | Taffy | Taffy | PROPN | Number=Sing | 15 said | nsubj |
| 17 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 15 said | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | not is | could | I | sure property | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | put | to-infinitive | I not said here | the spots | vn put-9.1-2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent in spot=Destination | ||||
| 3 | say speech: assert | past | Taffy | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: 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: «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/pg2781/10/147/