Just so stories, How the Alphabet Was Made, sentence 272

‘Hadn’t we better put a little bit of stick or something between each word, so’s they won’t rub up against each other and jostle, same as if they were carps?’

Who acts: we, stick · What happens: not have, put, not rub up, jostle, be · To what, where: little bit, each, same

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, stick), 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 Had	punct
2	Had	have	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	6 put	advcl
3	n’t	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	2 Had	advmod
4	we	we	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	6 put	nsubj
5	better	good	ADJ	Degree=Cmp	4 we	xcomp
6	put	put	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
7	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	9 bit	det
8	little	little	ADJ	Degree=Pos	9 bit	amod
9	bit	bit	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 put	obl:unmarked
10	of	of	ADP	_	11 stick	case
11	stick	stick	NOUN	Number=Sing	9 bit	nmod
12	or	or	CCONJ	_	13 something	cc
13	something	something	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Ind	9 bit	conj
14	between	between	ADP	_	16 word	case
15	each	each	DET	PronType=Tot	16 word	det
16	word	word	NOUN	Number=Sing	13 something	nmod
17	,	,	PUNCT	_	23 rub	punct
18	so	so	ADV	_	23 rub	advmod
19	’s	's	SCONJ	_	23 rub	mark
20	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	23 rub	nsubj
21	wo	will	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	23 rub	aux
22	n’t	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	23 rub	advmod
23	rub	rub	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	6 put	conj
24	up	up	ADP	_	23 rub	compound:prt
25	against	against	ADP	_	26 each	case
26	each	each	DET	ExtPos=PRON PronType=Rcp	23 rub	obl
27	other	other	ADJ	Degree=Pos	26 each	fixed
28	and	and	CCONJ	_	29 jostle	cc
29	jostle	jostle	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=1 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	6 put	conj
30	,	,	PUNCT	_	31 same	punct
31	same	same	ADJ	Degree=Pos	29 jostle	obj
32	as	as	ADP	_	36 carps	case
33	if	if	SCONJ	_	36 carps	mark
34	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	36 carps	nsubj
35	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	36 carps	cop
36	carps	carp	NOUN	Number=Plur	29 jostle	obl
37	?	?	PUNCT	_	6 put	punct
38	’	'	PUNCT	_	6 put	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	not have	past	we not said here				vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent
2	put	past	we	a little bit of stick			vn invest-13.5.4-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent
3	not rub up	future	stick		each		vn spray-9.7-1 «NP V PP.destination»: agent=Theme against each=Destination
4	jostle	present	we not said here	same			vn push-12-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent same=Theme
5	is a condition, not said to happen	past	stick			as carps	tree rules

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/pg2781/10/272/