The Jade Story Book; Stories from the Orient, Opening, part 8, sentence 92
Now he wanted to die, but couldn’t, and it was no use trying to.
Who acts: life, thing, use · What happens: want, die, be, try · To what, where: use
This is a sentence of «The Jade Story Book; Stories from the Orient» by Penrhyn Wingfield Coussens, Opening, part 8. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (life, thing, use), 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 | Now | now | ADV | PronType=Dem | 3 wanted | advmod |
| 2 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 3 wanted | nsubj |
| 3 | wanted | want | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | to | to | PART | _ | 5 die | mark |
| 5 | die | die | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 3 wanted | xcomp |
| 6 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 8 could | punct |
| 7 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 8 could | cc |
| 8 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 3 wanted | conj |
| 9 | n’t | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 8 could | advmod |
| 10 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 15 use | punct |
| 11 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 15 use | cc |
| 12 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 15 use | nsubj |
| 13 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 15 use | cop |
| 14 | no | no | DET | PronType=Neg | 15 use | det |
| 15 | use | use | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 wanted | obl |
| 16 | trying | try | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 15 use | acl |
| 17 | to | to | PART | _ | 16 trying | xcomp |
| 18 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 wanted | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | want | past | life | now | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme | ||||
| 2 | die not said to happen | to-infinitive | life not said here | vn calibratable_cos-45.6.1 «NP.attribute V»: agent=Attribute | |||||
| 3 | is a | past | thing | no use | tree rules | ||||
| 4 | try | gerund | no use not said here | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: 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: «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/pg65965/8/92/