Russian Folk-Tales, Opening, part 5, sentence 3
Once there lived an old man, and he was such a sorry drunkard as words cannot describe.
Who acts: man, words · What happens: live, be, not describe · To what, where: old man, sorry drunkard
This is a sentence of «Russian Folk-Tales» by A. N. Afanas'ev, Opening, part 5. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man, words), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.
Mova's own parse. This tree may be wrong.
The tree
The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)
| # | word | lemma | UPOS | features | head | relation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Once | once | ADV | NumForm=Word NumType=Mult | 3 lived | advmod |
| 2 | there | there | ADV | PronType=Dem | 3 lived | advmod |
| 3 | lived | live | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | an | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 6 man | det |
| 5 | old | old | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 6 man | amod |
| 6 | man | man | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 lived | obj |
| 7 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 14 drunkard | punct |
| 8 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 14 drunkard | cc |
| 9 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 14 drunkard | nsubj |
| 10 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 14 drunkard | cop |
| 11 | such | such | DET | PronType=Ind | 14 drunkard | det:predet |
| 12 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 14 drunkard | det |
| 13 | sorry | sorry | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 14 drunkard | amod |
| 14 | drunkard | drunkard | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 lived | obl |
| 15 | as | as | SCONJ | _ | 19 describe | mark |
| 16 | words | word | NOUN | Number=Plur | 19 describe | nsubj |
| 17 | can | can | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 19 describe | aux |
| 18 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 19 describe | advmod |
| 19 | describe | describe | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 14 drunkard | acl |
| 20 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 lived | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | live | past | a old man | there | once property | vn lodge-46 «NP V ADV»: agent=Theme man=Location | |||
| 2 | is a | past | man | such sorry drunkard | tree rules | ||||
| 3 | not describe | can | words | such sorry drunkard not said here | vn characterize-29.2-1-1 «NP V NP S_ING»: agent=Agent drunkard=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: «Russian Folk-Tales» by A. N. Afanas'ev, Project Gutenberg book 62509 (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/pg62509/5/3/