The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Land of Tuonela, sentence 143
Softly, very softly, she began to sing a weird lullaby—a song of the silent land.
Who acts: errand, silent land · What happens: begin, sing · To what, where: weird lullaby
This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Land of Tuonela. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (errand, silent land), 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 | Softly | softly | ADV | _ | 7 began | advmod |
| 2 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 1 Softly | punct |
| 3 | very | very | ADV | _ | 4 softly | advmod |
| 4 | softly | softly | ADV | _ | 7 began | advmod |
| 5 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 7 began | punct |
| 6 | she | she | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 7 began | nsubj |
| 7 | began | begin | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 8 | to | to | PART | _ | 9 sing | mark |
| 9 | sing | sing | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 7 began | xcomp |
| 10 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 12 lullaby | det |
| 11 | weird | weird | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 12 lullaby | amod |
| 12 | lullaby | lullaby | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 sing | obj |
| 13 | — | - | PUNCT | _ | 15 song | punct |
| 14 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 15 song | det |
| 15 | song | song | NOUN | Number=Sing | 12 lullaby | appos |
| 16 | of | of | ADP | _ | 19 land | case |
| 17 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 19 land | det |
| 18 | silent | silent | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 19 land | amod |
| 19 | land | land | NOUN | Number=Sing | 15 song | nmod |
| 20 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 7 began | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | begin | past | errand | softly property | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality | ||||
| 2 | sing speech: express | to-infinitive | errand not said here | a weird lullaby | vn sound_emission-43.2 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location lullaby=Theme | ||||
| 3 | sing | the silent land | nom song «communication intransitive»: of=agent |
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/pg66819/14/143/