The Punishment of the Stingy, and Other Indian Stories, The Grizzly Bear’s Medicine, sentence 186
Old men were calling his name, young women were singing about him, and old women dancing before him.
Who acts: Old men, young women, old women, man · What happens: call, sing, dance, name · To what, where: name · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «The Punishment of the Stingy, and Other Indian Stories» by George Bird Grinnell, The Grizzly Bear’s Medicine. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Old men, young women, old women, man), 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 | Old | old | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 2 men | amod |
| 2 | men | man | NOUN | Number=Plur | 4 calling | nsubj |
| 3 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 4 calling | aux |
| 4 | calling | call | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | root | root |
| 5 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 6 name | nmod:poss |
| 6 | name | name | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 calling | obj |
| 7 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 11 singing | punct |
| 8 | young | young | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 9 women | amod |
| 9 | women | woman | NOUN | Number=Plur | 11 singing | nsubj |
| 10 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 11 singing | aux |
| 11 | singing | sing | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 4 calling | advcl |
| 12 | about | about | ADP | _ | 13 him | case |
| 13 | him | he | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 11 singing | obl |
| 14 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 17 women | punct |
| 15 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 17 women | cc |
| 16 | old | old | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 17 women | amod |
| 17 | women | woman | NOUN | Number=Plur | 4 calling | parataxis |
| 18 | dancing | dance | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 17 women | acl |
| 19 | before | before | ADP | _ | 20 him | case |
| 20 | him | he | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 18 dancing | obl |
| 21 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 4 calling | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | call speech: assert | past · progressive | Old men | man's name | old women parataxis | vn initiate_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent name=Recipient | |||
| 2 | sing speech: express | past · progressive | young women | about man | vn sound_emission-43.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme about he=Location | ||||
| 3 | dance | gerund | old women not said here | before man | vn modes_of_being_with_motion-47.3 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme before he=Location | ||||
| 4 | name | man | nom name «communication transitive»: poss=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: «The Punishment of the Stingy, and Other Indian Stories» by George Bird Grinnell, Project Gutenberg book 66596 (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/pg66596/10/186/