The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Unfinished Boat, sentence 140
He slew an army of squirrels; he killed a field full of reindeer; he slaughtered gray wolves without number.
Who acts: task · What happens: slay, kill, slaughter · To what, where: army, field, gray wolves
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 (task), 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 slew | nsubj |
| 2 | slew | slay | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | an | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 4 army | det |
| 4 | army | army | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 slew | obj |
| 5 | of | of | ADP | _ | 6 squirrels | case |
| 6 | squirrels | squirrel | NOUN | Number=Plur | 4 army | nmod |
| 7 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 9 killed | punct |
| 8 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 9 killed | nsubj |
| 9 | killed | kill | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 2 slew | conj |
| 10 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 11 field | det |
| 11 | field | field | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 killed | obj |
| 12 | full | full | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 11 field | amod |
| 13 | of | of | ADP | _ | 14 reindeer | case |
| 14 | reindeer | reindeer | NOUN | Number=Sing | 12 full | obl |
| 15 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 17 slaughtered | punct |
| 16 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 17 slaughtered | nsubj |
| 17 | slaughtered | slaughter | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 2 slew | conj |
| 18 | gray | gray | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 19 wolves | amod |
| 19 | wolves | wolf | NOUN | Number=Plur | 17 slaughtered | obj |
| 20 | without | without | ADP | _ | 21 number | case |
| 21 | number | number | NOUN | Number=Sing | 17 slaughtered | obl |
| 22 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 slew | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | slay | past | task | a army of squirrels | vn murder-42.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent army=Patient | ||||
| 2 | kill | past | task | a field | vn remove-10.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent field=Theme | ||||
| 3 | slaughter | past | task | gray wolves | without number | vn murder-42.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent wolf=Patient |
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/pg66819/13/140/