Just so stories, The Elephant’s Child, sentence 19

And they all spanked him once more for luck, though he asked them most politely to stop.

Who acts: trees, Crocodile · What happens: spank, ask, stop · To what, where: Crocodile, trees

This is a sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, The Elephant’s Child. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (trees, Crocodile), 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	And	and	CCONJ	_	4 spanked	cc
2	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	4 spanked	nsubj
3	all	all	ADV	_	4 spanked	advmod
4	spanked	spank	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
5	him	he	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	4 spanked	obj
6	once	once	ADV	NumForm=Word NumType=Mult	7 more	advmod
7	more	more	ADV	Degree=Cmp	4 spanked	advmod
8	for	for	ADP	_	9 luck	case
9	luck	luck	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 spanked	obl
10	,	,	PUNCT	_	13 asked	punct
11	though	though	SCONJ	_	13 asked	mark
12	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	13 asked	nsubj
13	asked	ask	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 spanked	conj
14	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	13 asked	obj
15	most	most	ADV	Degree=Sup	16 politely	advmod
16	politely	politely	ADV	_	13 asked	advmod
17	to	to	PART	_	18 stop	mark
18	stop	stop	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	16 politely	advcl
19	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 spanked	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	other	roles by
1	spank	past	trees = tree	Crocodile		for luck; all property	vn spank-18.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Patient
2	ask speech: ask	past	Crocodile		trees = tree	politely property	vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent they=Recipient
3	stop	to-infinitive	Crocodile not said here				vn stop-55.4-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality

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/pg2781/6/19/