The Jade Story Book; Stories from the Orient, Opening, part 22, sentence 99

But as he spoke, the axe crumbled to dust beneath his fingers, and the second chess-player laughed, and pointed to the little brown sweetmeats on the table.

Who acts: Wang, axe, second chess player · What happens: speak, crumble, dust, laugh, point · To what, where: fingers, little brown sweetmeats · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Jade Story Book; Stories from the Orient» by Penrhyn Wingfield Coussens, Opening, part 22. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Wang, axe, second chess player), 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	But	but	CCONJ	_	8 crumbled	cc
2	as	as	SCONJ	_	4 spoke	mark
3	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	4 spoke	nsubj
4	spoke	speak	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	8 crumbled	advcl
5	,	,	PUNCT	_	4 spoke	punct
6	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	7 axe	det
7	axe	axe	NOUN	Number=Sing	8 crumbled	nsubj
8	crumbled	crumble	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
9	to	to	PART	_	10 dust	mark
10	dust	dust	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	8 crumbled	xcomp
11	beneath	beneath	ADP	_	13 fingers	case
12	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	13 fingers	nmod:poss
13	fingers	finger	NOUN	Number=Plur	10 dust	obl
14	,	,	PUNCT	_	21 laughed	punct
15	and	and	CCONJ	_	21 laughed	cc
16	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	20 player	det
17	second	second	ADJ	Degree=Pos NumForm=Word NumType=Ord	20 player	amod
18	chess	chess	NOUN	Number=Sing	20 player	compound
19	-	-	PUNCT	_	18 chess	punct
20	player	player	NOUN	Number=Sing	21 laughed	nsubj
21	laughed	laugh	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	8 crumbled	conj
22	,	,	PUNCT	_	24 pointed	punct
23	and	and	CCONJ	_	24 pointed	cc
24	pointed	point	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	8 crumbled	conj
25	to	to	ADP	_	29 sweetmeats	case
26	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	29 sweetmeats	det
27	little	little	ADJ	Degree=Pos	29 sweetmeats	amod
28	brown	brown	ADJ	Degree=Pos	29 sweetmeats	amod
29	sweetmeats	sweetmeat	NOUN	Number=Plur	24 pointed	obl
30	on	on	ADP	_	32 table	case
31	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	32 table	det
32	table	table	NOUN	Number=Sing	29 sweetmeats	nmod
33	.	.	PUNCT	_	8 crumbled	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	to whom	where	roles by
1	speak speech: other	past	Wang			vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent
2	crumble	past	the axe			tree rules
3	dust	to-infinitive	the axe not said here		Wang's fingers	vn spray-9.7-2 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent beneath finger=Destination
4	laugh	past	the second chess player			vn nonverbal_expression-40.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent
5	point	participle	the axe not said here	the little brown sweetmeats on the table		vn wink-40.3.1 «NP V PP.recipient»: agent=Agent to sweetmeat=Recipient

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: «The Jade Story Book; Stories from the Orient» by Penrhyn Wingfield Coussens, Project Gutenberg book 65965 (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/pg65965/22/99/

🌲 The Jade Story Book; Stories from the Orient, Opening, part 22, sentence 99

The tree

Pragmatics

The Jade Story Book; Stories from the Orient, Opening, part 22, sentence 99