Just so stories, How the Alphabet Was Made, sentence 26
‘Don’t you see?’ said Taffy, scratching away on the bark.
Who acts: you, Taffy · What happens: not do, see, say, scratch away · To what, where: bark · 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 (you, 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 | _ | 2 Do | punct |
| 2 | Do | do | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 8 said | ccomp |
| 3 | n’t | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 2 Do | advmod |
| 4 | you | you | PRON | Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs | 5 see | nsubj |
| 5 | see | see | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=2 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 2 Do | advcl |
| 6 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 2 Do | punct |
| 7 | ’ | ' | PUNCT | _ | 2 Do | punct |
| 8 | said | say | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 9 | Taffy | Taffy | PROPN | Number=Sing | 8 said | nsubj |
| 10 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 11 scratching | punct |
| 11 | scratching | scratch | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 8 said | advcl |
| 12 | away | away | ADV | _ | 11 scratching | advmod |
| 13 | on | on | ADP | _ | 15 bark | case |
| 14 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 15 bark | det |
| 15 | bark | bark | NOUN | Number=Sing | 11 scratching | obl |
| 16 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 8 said | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | not do | infinitive | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | ||||||
| 2 | see | present | you | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer | |||||
| 3 | say speech: assert | past | Taffy | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | |||||
| 4 | scratch away | gerund | Taffy not said here | the bark | away property | vn rummage-35.5 «NP V PP.location PP.theme»: agent=Agent on bark=Location |
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/pg2781/10/26/