The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Launching, sentence 49
Thus did the Minstrel sing as he sat at the boat’s stern and guided it along its watery path.
Who acts: Wind · What happens: do, sit, guide · To what, where: Minstrel sing, stern, sing, watery path
This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Launching. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Wind), 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 | Thus | thus | ADV | _ | 2 did | advmod |
| 2 | did | do | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 5 sing | det |
| 4 | Minstrel | Minstrel | PROPN | Number=Sing | 5 sing | compound |
| 5 | sing | sing | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 did | obj |
| 6 | as | as | SCONJ | _ | 8 sat | mark |
| 7 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 8 sat | nsubj |
| 8 | sat | sit | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 2 did | advcl |
| 9 | at | at | ADP | _ | 13 stern | case |
| 10 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 11 boat | det |
| 11 | boat | boat | NOUN | Number=Sing | 13 stern | nmod:poss |
| 12 | ’s | 's | PART | _ | 11 boat | case |
| 13 | stern | stern | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 sat | obl |
| 14 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 15 guided | cc |
| 15 | guided | guide | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 8 sat | conj |
| 16 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 15 guided | obj |
| 17 | along | along | ADP | _ | 20 path | case |
| 18 | its | its | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 20 path | nmod:poss |
| 19 | watery | watery | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 20 path | amod |
| 20 | path | path | NOUN | Number=Sing | 15 guided | obl |
| 21 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 did | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | do | past | the Minstrel sing | thus property | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent sing=Eventuality | ||||
| 2 | sit | past | Wind | the boat's stern | vn assuming_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent at stern=Location | ||||
| 3 | guide | past | Wind not said here | sing | sing's watery path | vn accompany-51.7 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent it=Theme along path=Destination |
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/pg66819/18/49/