Just so stories, How the First Letter Was Written, sentence 167

‘I didn’t intend to; I only wanted Daddy’s black-handled spear,’ said Taffy.

Who acts: I, Taffy · What happens: not intend, want, handle, say · To what, where: handled spear · 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 (I, Taffy), 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	_	5 intend	punct
2	I	I	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	5 intend	nsubj
3	did	do	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	5 intend	aux
4	n’t	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	5 intend	advmod
5	intend	intend	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	19 said	ccomp
6	to	to	ADP	_	5 intend	obl
7	;	;	PUNCT	_	10 wanted	punct
8	I	I	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	10 wanted	nsubj
9	only	only	ADV	_	10 wanted	advmod
10	wanted	want	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	5 intend	parataxis
11	Daddy	Daddy	PROPN	Number=Sing	16 spear	nmod:poss
12	’s	's	PART	_	11 Daddy	case
13	black	black	ADJ	Degree=Pos	15 handled	compound
14	-	-	PUNCT	_	13 black	punct
15	handled	handle	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	16 spear	amod
16	spear	spear	NOUN	Number=Sing	10 wanted	obj
17	,	,	PUNCT	_	10 wanted	punct
18	’	'	PUNCT	_	5 intend	punct
19	said	say	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
20	Taffy	Taffy	PROPN	Number=Sing	19 said	nsubj
21	.	.	PUNCT	_	19 said	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	roles by
1	not intend	past · do-support	I		vn intend-61.2-1-1 «NP V S_ING»: agent=Agent
2	want	past	I	Daddy's handled spear	vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot spear=Theme
3	handle	participle			vn hold-15.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent
4	say speech: assert	past	Taffy		vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=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.

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg2781/9/167/