Just so stories, The Elephant’s Child, sentence 87

One dark evening he came back to all his dear families, and he coiled up his trunk and said, ‘How do you do?’

Who acts: Child, you · What happens: come back, coil up, say, do · To what, where: dear families, trunk · 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 (Child, you), 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	One	one	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	3 evening	nummod
2	dark	dark	ADJ	Degree=Pos	3 evening	amod
3	evening	evening	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 came	obl:unmarked
4	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	5 came	nsubj
5	came	come	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
6	back	back	ADV	_	5 came	advmod
7	to	to	ADP	_	11 families	case
8	all	all	DET	PronType=Tot	11 families	det:predet
9	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	11 families	nmod:poss
10	dear	dear	ADJ	Degree=Pos	11 families	amod
11	families	family	NOUN	Number=Plur	5 came	obl
12	,	,	PUNCT	_	15 coiled	punct
13	and	and	CCONJ	_	15 coiled	cc
14	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	15 coiled	nsubj
15	coiled	coil	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	5 came	parataxis
16	up	up	ADP	_	15 coiled	compound:prt
17	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	18 trunk	nmod:poss
18	trunk	trunk	NOUN	Number=Sing	15 coiled	obj
19	and	and	CCONJ	_	20 said	cc
20	said	say	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	15 coiled	conj
21	,	,	PUNCT	_	26 do	punct
22	‘	'	PUNCT	_	26 do	punct
23	How	how	ADV	PronType=Int	26 do	advmod
24	do	do	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=2 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	26 do	aux
25	you	you	PRON	Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs	26 do	nsubj
26	do	do	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	20 said	ccomp
27	?	?	PUNCT	_	26 do	punct
28	’	'	PUNCT	_	26 do	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	when	roles by
1	come back	past	Child		Child's dear families	evening	vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial_location»: agent=Theme to family=Initial_Location
2	coil up	past	Child	Child's trunk			vn knead-26.5 «NP V NP.material»: agent=Agent trunk=Material
3	say speech: assert	past	Child not said here				vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
4	do	present · do-support	you				vn act-114-1 «NP V»: 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/pg2781/6/87/