Just so stories, How the First Letter Was Written, sentence 48

He did this, Best Beloved, to show that his heart was as white as the birch-bark and that he meant no harm; but Taffy didn’t quite understand.

Who acts: man, heart, Taffy · What happens: do, show, be, mean, not understand · To what, where: this, harm · 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 (man, heart, 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	He	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 did	nsubj
2	did	do	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	this	this	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	2 did	obj
4	,	,	PUNCT	_	6 Beloved	punct
5	Best	good	ADJ	Degree=Sup	6 Beloved	amod
6	Beloved	Beloved	PROPN	Number=Sing	2 did	parataxis
7	,	,	PUNCT	_	9 show	punct
8	to	to	PART	_	9 show	mark
9	show	show	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	6 Beloved	acl
10	that	that	SCONJ	_	15 white	mark
11	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	12 heart	nmod:poss
12	heart	heart	NOUN	Number=Sing	15 white	nsubj
13	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	15 white	cop
14	as	as	ADV	_	15 white	advmod
15	white	white	ADJ	Degree=Pos	9 show	ccomp
16	as	as	ADP	_	20 bark	case
17	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	20 bark	det
18	birch	birch	NOUN	Number=Sing	20 bark	compound
19	-	-	PUNCT	_	18 birch	punct
20	bark	bark	NOUN	Number=Sing	15 white	obl
21	and	and	CCONJ	_	24 meant	cc
22	that	that	SCONJ	_	24 meant	mark
23	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	24 meant	nsubj
24	meant	mean	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	20 bark	conj
25	no	no	DET	PronType=Neg	26 harm	det
26	harm	harm	NOUN	Number=Sing	24 meant	obj
27	;	;	PUNCT	_	33 understand	punct
28	but	but	CCONJ	_	33 understand	cc
29	Taffy	Taffy	PROPN	Number=Sing	33 understand	nsubj
30	did	do	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	33 understand	aux
31	n’t	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	33 understand	advmod
32	quite	quite	ADV	_	33 understand	advmod
33	understand	understand	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	2 did	parataxis
34	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 did	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	do	past	man	this		vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent this=Eventuality
2	show	to-infinitive	man not said here			vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent
3	is	past	man's heart		as the birch bark; white property	tree rules
4	mean	past	man	no harm		vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent harm=Topic
5	not understand	past · do-support	Taffy			vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer

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/pg2781/9/48/