Just so stories, The Elephant’s Child, sentence 28

‘’Scuse me,’ said the Elephant’s Child, ‘but could you kindly tell me what he has for dinner?’

Who acts: you, Child · What happens: scuse, say, tell, have · To what, where: me, Child · Speech: someone speaks here

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 (you, Child), 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 Scuse	punct
2	Scuse	scuse	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	6 said	ccomp
3	me	I	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	2 Scuse	obj
4	,	,	PUNCT	_	2 Scuse	punct
5	’	'	PUNCT	_	2 Scuse	punct
6	said	say	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
7	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	8 Elephant	det
8	Elephant	Elephant	PROPN	Number=Sing	10 Child	nmod:poss
9	’s	's	PART	_	8 Elephant	case
10	Child	child	NOUN	Number=Sing	6 said	obj
11	,	,	PUNCT	_	17 tell	punct
12	‘	'	PUNCT	_	17 tell	punct
13	but	but	CCONJ	_	17 tell	cc
14	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	17 tell	aux
15	you	you	PRON	Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs	17 tell	nsubj
16	kindly	kindly	ADV	_	17 tell	advmod
17	tell	tell	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	6 said	ccomp
18	me	I	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	17 tell	iobj
19	what	what	PRON	PronType=Int	21 has	obj
20	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	21 has	nsubj
21	has	have	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	17 tell	ccomp
22	for	for	ADP	_	23 dinner	case
23	dinner	dinner	NOUN	Number=Sing	21 has	obl
24	?	?	PUNCT	_	6 said	punct
25	’	'	PUNCT	_	6 said	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	other	roles by
1	scuse	infinitive		me			tree rules
2	say speech: assert	past		the Elephant's Child			tree rules
3	tell speech: assert	could	you		me	kindly property	vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP what S»: agent=Agent i=Recipient clause=Topic
4	have	present	Child			for dinner	vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Patient

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/pg2781/6/28/