The Punishment of the Stingy, and Other Indian Stories, Bluejay Visits the Ghosts, sentence 30
Now these people always spoke in whispers, and Bluejay could not hear what they said, and did not understand them.
Who acts: people, Bluejay · What happens: speak, not hear, say, not understand · To what, where: whispers, people · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «The Punishment of the Stingy, and Other Indian Stories» by George Bird Grinnell, Bluejay Visits the Ghosts. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (people, Bluejay), 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 | 5 spoke | advmod |
| 2 | these | this | DET | Number=Plur PronType=Dem | 3 people | det |
| 3 | people | people | NOUN | Number=Plur | 5 spoke | nsubj |
| 4 | always | always | ADV | PronType=Tot | 5 spoke | advmod |
| 5 | spoke | speak | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 6 | in | in | ADP | _ | 7 whispers | case |
| 7 | whispers | whisper | NOUN | Number=Plur | 5 spoke | obl |
| 8 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 13 hear | punct |
| 9 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 13 hear | cc |
| 10 | Bluejay | Bluejay | PROPN | Number=Sing | 13 hear | nsubj |
| 11 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 13 hear | aux |
| 12 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 13 hear | advmod |
| 13 | hear | hear | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 5 spoke | conj |
| 14 | what | what | PRON | PronType=Int | 16 said | obj |
| 15 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 16 said | nsubj |
| 16 | said | say | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 13 hear | ccomp |
| 17 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 21 understand | punct |
| 18 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 21 understand | cc |
| 19 | did | do | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 21 understand | aux |
| 20 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 21 understand | advmod |
| 21 | understand | understand | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 16 said | ccomp |
| 22 | them | they | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 21 understand | obj |
| 23 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 5 spoke | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | speak speech: other | past | this people | whispers | now | always property | vn talk-37.5 «NP V»: agent=Agent | ||
| 2 | not hear | could | Bluejay | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V how S»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus | |||||
| 3 | say speech: assert | past | people | what obj | tree rules | ||||
| 4 | not understand | past · do-support | people | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer they=Stimulus |
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/pg66596/6/30/