Just so stories, How the First Letter Was Written, sentence 135
Can’t a man break his carp-spear without the whole countryside descending on him?
Who acts: Ca, whole countryside · What happens: not break, descend · To what, where: carp spear
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 (Ca, whole countryside), 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 | Ca | Ca | PROPN | Number=Sing | 5 break | nsubj |
| 2 | n’t | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 5 break | advmod |
| 3 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 4 man | det |
| 4 | man | man | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 break | nsubj |
| 5 | break | break | VERB | Mood=Imp VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 6 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 9 spear | nmod:poss |
| 7 | carp | carp | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 spear | compound |
| 8 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 7 carp | punct |
| 9 | spear | spear | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 break | obj |
| 10 | without | without | ADP | _ | 13 countryside | case |
| 11 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 13 countryside | det |
| 12 | whole | whole | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 13 countryside | amod |
| 13 | countryside | countryside | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 break | obl |
| 14 | descending | descend | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 13 countryside | acl |
| 15 | on | on | ADP | _ | 16 him | case |
| 16 | him | he | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 14 descending | obl |
| 17 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 5 break | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | not break | infinitive | Ca | man's carp spear | without the whole countryside | vn hurt-40.8.3-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer spear=Patient | |||
| 2 | descend | gerund | the whole countryside not said here | on man | vn meander-47.7-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
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/pg2781/9/135/