Just so stories, How the First Letter Was Written, sentence 165

They were very polite to all their husbands, and said ‘Idiot!’ ever so often.

Who acts: people · What happens: be, say · To what, where: Idiot · Speech: someone speaks here

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 (people), 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	They	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	4 polite	nsubj
2	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 polite	cop
3	very	very	ADV	_	4 polite	advmod
4	polite	polite	ADJ	Degree=Pos	root	root
5	to	to	ADP	_	8 husbands	case
6	all	all	DET	PronType=Tot	8 husbands	det:predet
7	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	8 husbands	nmod:poss
8	husbands	husband	NOUN	Number=Plur	4 polite	obl
9	,	,	PUNCT	_	11 said	punct
10	and	and	CCONJ	_	11 said	cc
11	said	say	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 polite	conj
12	‘	'	PUNCT	_	13 Idiot	punct
13	Idiot	idiot	NOUN	Number=Sing	11 said	obj
14	!	!	PUNCT	_	13 Idiot	punct
15	’	'	PUNCT	_	13 Idiot	punct
16	ever	ever	ADV	PronType=Ind	17 so	advmod
17	so	so	ADV	_	18 often	advmod
18	often	often	ADV	_	11 said	advmod
19	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 polite	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	is	past	people					to people's husbands; polite property	tree rules
2	say speech: assert	past	people not said here	Idiot				often property	vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent idiot=Topic

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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