Just so stories, How the First Letter Was Written, sentence 26

“Awful” isn’t a pretty word, but it could be a convenience, now you mention it, if we could write home.’

Who acts: Awful, word, you, we · What happens: not be, be, mention, write · To what, where: pretty word, convenience, word

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 (Awful, word, you, we), 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	_	2 Awful	punct
2	Awful	awful	ADJ	Degree=Pos	8 word	nsubj
3	”	"	PUNCT	_	2 Awful	punct
4	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	8 word	cop
5	n’t	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	8 word	advmod
6	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	8 word	det
7	pretty	pretty	ADJ	Degree=Pos	8 word	amod
8	word	word	NOUN	Number=Sing	root	root
9	,	,	PUNCT	_	15 convenience	punct
10	but	but	CCONJ	_	15 convenience	cc
11	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	15 convenience	nsubj
12	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	15 convenience	aux
13	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	15 convenience	cop
14	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	15 convenience	det
15	convenience	convenience	NOUN	Number=Sing	8 word	appos
16	,	,	PUNCT	_	19 mention	punct
17	now	now	ADV	PronType=Dem	19 mention	advmod
18	you	you	PRON	Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs	19 mention	nsubj
19	mention	mention	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=2 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	15 convenience	parataxis
20	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	19 mention	obj
21	,	,	PUNCT	_	25 write	punct
22	if	if	SCONJ	_	25 write	mark
23	we	we	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs	25 write	nsubj
24	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	25 write	aux
25	write	write	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	19 mention	conj
26	home	home	ADV	_	25 write	advmod
27	.	.	PUNCT	_	15 convenience	punct
28	’	'	PUNCT	_	15 convenience	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	when	other	roles by
1	not is a	present	Awful	a pretty word			tree rules
2	is a	could	word	a convenience			tree rules
3	mention speech: other	present	you	word	now		vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent it=Topic
4	write a condition, not said to happen	could	we			home property	vn scribble-25.2-1 «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.

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