The Punishment of the Stingy, and Other Indian Stories, The Girl Who Was the Ring [1], sentence 152
He would sail down low over the Buffalo’s backs, and was only just able to keep above them.
Who acts: Hawk · What happens: sail down, be, keep · To what, where: backs
This is a sentence of «The Punishment of the Stingy, and Other Indian Stories» by George Bird Grinnell, The Girl Who Was the Ring [1]. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Hawk), 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 | 3 sail | nsubj |
| 2 | would | would | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 3 sail | aux |
| 3 | sail | sail | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | root | root |
| 4 | down | down | ADV | _ | 3 sail | advmod |
| 5 | low | low | ADV | Degree=Pos | 3 sail | advmod |
| 6 | over | over | ADP | _ | 10 backs | case |
| 7 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 8 Buffalo | det |
| 8 | Buffalo | Buffalo | PROPN | Number=Sing | 10 backs | nmod:poss |
| 9 | ’s | 's | PART | _ | 8 Buffalo | case |
| 10 | backs | back | NOUN | Number=Plur | 3 sail | obl |
| 11 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 16 able | punct |
| 12 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 16 able | cc |
| 13 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 16 able | cop |
| 14 | only | only | ADV | _ | 16 able | advmod |
| 15 | just | just | ADV | _ | 16 able | advmod |
| 16 | able | able | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 3 sail | conj |
| 17 | to | to | PART | _ | 18 keep | mark |
| 18 | keep | keep | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 16 able | xcomp |
| 19 | above | above | ADP | _ | 20 them | case |
| 20 | them | they | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 18 keep | obl |
| 21 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 sail | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | sail down | would | Hawk | the Buffalo's backs | down, low property | vn nonvehicle-51.4.2-1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent over back=Trajectory | |||
| 2 | is | past | Hawk not said here | able property | tree rules | ||||
| 3 | keep | to-infinitive | Hawk not said here | above sides = side | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent above they=Location |
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/pg66596/7/152/