The Punishment of the Stingy, and Other Indian Stories, The First Corn, sentence 53
When they were there, he opened his robe and spread it out, and it was covered with pieces of fat buffalo meat piled high.
Who acts: people, man, pieces · What happens: be, open, spread out, cover, buffalo, pile · To what, where: robe, meat
This is a sentence of «The Punishment of the Stingy, and Other Indian Stories» by George Bird Grinnell, The First Corn. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (people, man, pieces), 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 | When | when | ADV | PronType=Int | 4 there | advmod |
| 2 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 4 there | nsubj |
| 3 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 4 there | cop |
| 4 | there | there | ADV | PronType=Dem | 7 opened | advmod |
| 5 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 4 there | punct |
| 6 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 7 opened | nsubj |
| 7 | opened | open | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 8 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 9 robe | nmod:poss |
| 9 | robe | robe | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 opened | obj |
| 10 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 11 spread | cc |
| 11 | spread | spread | VERB | Mood=Ind Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 7 opened | conj |
| 12 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 11 spread | obj |
| 13 | out | out | ADP | _ | 11 spread | compound:prt |
| 14 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 18 covered | punct |
| 15 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 18 covered | cc |
| 16 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 18 covered | nsubj:pass |
| 17 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 18 covered | aux:pass |
| 18 | covered | cover | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 7 opened | conj |
| 19 | with | with | SCONJ | _ | 23 buffalo | mark |
| 20 | pieces | piece | NOUN | Number=Plur | 23 buffalo | nsubj |
| 21 | of | of | ADP | _ | 22 fat | case |
| 22 | fat | fat | NOUN | Number=Sing | 20 pieces | nmod |
| 23 | buffalo | buffalo | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 18 covered | advcl |
| 24 | meat | meat | NOUN | Number=Sing | 23 buffalo | obj |
| 25 | piled | pile | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 24 meat | acl |
| 26 | high | high | ADV | Degree=Pos | 25 piled | advmod |
| 27 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 7 opened | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is | past | people | there property | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | open | past | man | man's robe | vn spatial_configuration-47.6-1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location robe=Theme | ||||
| 3 | spread out | past | man not said here | robe | vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location it=Theme | ||||
| 4 | cover | past · passive | robe | vn fill-9.8-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Destination | |||||
| 5 | buffalo | present | pieces of fat | meat | tree rules | ||||
| 6 | pile | participle | meat not said here | high property | vn spray-9.7-1-1 «NP V PP.destination»: agent=Theme |
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/pg66596/8/53/