The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Barking Dogs, sentence 24
“Mother,” she said, “I am too busy to bother with barking dogs.
Who acts: Maid · What happens: say, be, bother, bark · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Barking Dogs. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Maid), 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 | _ | 2 Mother | punct |
| 2 | Mother | mother | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 said | ccomp |
| 3 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 2 Mother | punct |
| 4 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 2 Mother | punct |
| 5 | she | she | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 6 said | nsubj |
| 6 | said | say | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 7 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 12 busy | punct |
| 8 | “ | " | PUNCT | _ | 12 busy | punct |
| 9 | I | I | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 12 busy | nsubj |
| 10 | am | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 12 busy | cop |
| 11 | too | too | ADV | _ | 12 busy | advmod |
| 12 | busy | busy | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 6 said | ccomp |
| 13 | to | to | PART | _ | 14 bother | mark |
| 14 | bother | bother | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 12 busy | advcl |
| 15 | with | with | ADP | _ | 17 dogs | case |
| 16 | barking | bark | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 17 dogs | amod |
| 17 | dogs | dog | NOUN | Number=Plur | 14 bother | obl |
| 18 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 6 said | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | say speech: assert | past | Maid | Mother ccomp | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent | ||||
| 2 | is in a quote | present | Maid | busy property | tree rules | ||||
| 3 | bother in a quote | to-infinitive | Maid not said here | with barking dogs | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer | ||||
| 4 | bark in a quote | gerund | vn animal_sounds-38 «NP V»: agent=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/pg66819/22/24/