The Punishment of the Stingy, and Other Indian Stories, Bluejay Visits the Ghosts, sentence 8
He asked all the trees, but they could not tell him.
Who acts: Bluejay, trees · What happens: ask, not tell · To what, where: trees, Bluejay · 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 (Bluejay, trees), 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 | He | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 2 asked | nsubj |
| 2 | asked | ask | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | all | all | DET | PronType=Tot | 5 trees | det:predet |
| 4 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 5 trees | det |
| 5 | trees | tree | NOUN | Number=Plur | 2 asked | obj |
| 6 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 11 tell | punct |
| 7 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 11 tell | cc |
| 8 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 11 tell | nsubj |
| 9 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 11 tell | aux |
| 10 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 11 tell | advmod |
| 11 | tell | tell | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 2 asked | ccomp |
| 12 | him | he | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 11 tell | iobj |
| 13 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 asked | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ask speech: ask | past | Bluejay | all trees | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP whether S»: agent=Agent tree=Recipient clause=Topic | ||||
| 2 | not tell speech: assert | could | trees = tree | Bluejay | vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent he=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 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/pg66596/6/8/