The Punishment of the Stingy, and Other Indian Stories, The Beaver Stick, sentence 135
It was all he could do to keep from looking back for one last glimpse of them.
Who acts: power · What happens: do, keep, look back, glimpse · To what, where: all, beavers
This is a sentence of «The Punishment of the Stingy, and Other Indian Stories» by George Bird Grinnell, The Beaver Stick. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (power), 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 | It | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 3 all | nsubj |
| 2 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 3 all | cop |
| 3 | all | all | DET | PronType=Tot | root | root |
| 4 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 6 do | nsubj |
| 5 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 6 do | aux |
| 6 | do | do | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 3 all | acl:relcl |
| 7 | to | to | PART | _ | 8 keep | mark |
| 8 | keep | keep | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 6 do | advcl |
| 9 | from | from | SCONJ | _ | 10 looking | mark |
| 10 | looking | look | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 8 keep | xcomp |
| 11 | back | back | ADV | _ | 10 looking | advmod |
| 12 | for | for | ADP | _ | 15 glimpse | case |
| 13 | one | one | NUM | NumForm=Word NumType=Card | 15 glimpse | nummod |
| 14 | last | last | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 15 glimpse | amod |
| 15 | glimpse | glimpse | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 looking | obl |
| 16 | of | of | ADP | _ | 17 them | case |
| 17 | them | they | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 15 glimpse | nmod |
| 18 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 all | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | do | could | power | vn act-114-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 2 | keep | to-infinitive | power not said here | tree rules | |||||
| 3 | look back | gerund | power not said here | for one last glimpse of beavers | vn rummage-35.5 «NP V PP.location PP.theme»: agent=Agent for glimpse=Theme | ||||
| 5 | glimpse | beavers = beaver | nom glimpse «act transitive»: of=patient |
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/pg66596/17/135/