The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Unfinished Boat, sentence 137
“Perhaps a squirrel, perhaps a summer reindeer, or perhaps a gray and skulking wolf is hiding the precious secrets in its throat or between its jaws.
Who acts: skulking · What happens: skulk, hide · To what, where: wolf, precious secrets, throat, squirrel · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Unfinished Boat. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (skulking), 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 | “ | " | PUNCT | _ | 4 squirrel | punct |
| 2 | Perhaps | perhaps | ADV | _ | 4 squirrel | advmod |
| 3 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 4 squirrel | det |
| 4 | squirrel | squirrel | NOUN | Number=Sing | root | root |
| 5 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 9 reindeer | punct |
| 6 | perhaps | perhaps | ADV | _ | 9 reindeer | advmod |
| 7 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 9 reindeer | det |
| 8 | summer | summer | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 reindeer | compound |
| 9 | reindeer | reindeer | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 squirrel | nmod |
| 10 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 14 gray | punct |
| 11 | or | or | CCONJ | _ | 14 gray | cc |
| 12 | perhaps | perhaps | ADV | _ | 14 gray | advmod |
| 13 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 14 gray | det |
| 14 | gray | gray | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 squirrel | conj |
| 15 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 19 hiding | cc |
| 16 | skulking | skulk | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 19 hiding | csubj |
| 17 | wolf | wolf | NOUN | Number=Sing | 16 skulking | obj |
| 18 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 19 hiding | aux |
| 19 | hiding | hide | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 14 gray | conj |
| 20 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 22 secrets | det |
| 21 | precious | precious | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 22 secrets | amod |
| 22 | secrets | secret | NOUN | Number=Plur | 19 hiding | obj |
| 23 | in | in | ADP | _ | 25 throat | case |
| 24 | its | its | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 25 throat | nmod:poss |
| 25 | throat | throat | NOUN | Number=Sing | 19 hiding | obl |
| 26 | or | or | CCONJ | _ | 29 jaws | cc |
| 27 | between | between | ADP | _ | 29 jaws | case |
| 28 | its | its | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 29 jaws | nmod:poss |
| 29 | jaws | jaw | NOUN | Number=Plur | 25 throat | conj |
| 30 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 4 squirrel | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | skulk in a quote | gerund | wolf | vn run-51.3.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Initial_Location wolf=Theme | |||||
| 2 | hide in a quote | present · progressive | skulking | the precious secrets | wolf's throat or wolf's jaws | vn concealment-16-1 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent secret=Patient in throat=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 Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, Project Gutenberg book 66819 (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/pg66819/13/137/