Just so stories, How the First Letter Was Written, sentence 1

ONCE upon a most early time was a Neolithic man.

Who acts: early time · What happens: be

This is a sentence of «Just so stories» by Rudyard Kipling, How the First Letter Was Written. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (early time), 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	ONCE	once	ADV	NumForm=Word NumType=Mult	root	root
2	upon	upon	ADP	_	10 man	case
3	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	6 time	det
4	most	most	ADV	Degree=Sup	5 early	advmod
5	early	early	ADJ	Degree=Pos	6 time	amod
6	time	time	NOUN	Number=Sing	10 man	nsubj
7	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	10 man	cop
8	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	10 man	det
9	Neolithic	neolithic	ADJ	Degree=Pos	10 man	amod
10	man	man	NOUN	Number=Sing	1 ONCE	obl
11	.	.	PUNCT	_	1 ONCE	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	is	past	a early time					upon a Neolithic man	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.

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