The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Barking Dogs, sentence 72
The black watchdog was still tugging at his chain, still howling dolorously.
Who acts: black watchdog · What happens: tug, howl
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 (black watchdog), 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 | The | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 3 watchdog | det |
| 2 | black | black | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 3 watchdog | amod |
| 3 | watchdog | watchdog | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 tugging | nsubj |
| 4 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 6 tugging | aux |
| 5 | still | still | ADV | _ | 6 tugging | advmod |
| 6 | tugging | tug | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | root | root |
| 7 | at | at | ADP | _ | 9 chain | case |
| 8 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 9 chain | nmod:poss |
| 9 | chain | chain | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 tugging | obl |
| 10 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 12 howling | punct |
| 11 | still | still | ADV | _ | 12 howling | advmod |
| 12 | howling | howl | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 6 tugging | conj |
| 13 | dolorously | dolorously | ADV | _ | 12 howling | advmod |
| 14 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 6 tugging | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | tug | past · progressive | the black watchdog | still | at papa's chain | vn push-12-1 «NP V PP-Conative»: agent=Agent at chain=Theme | |||
| 2 | howl | gerund | the black watchdog not said here | still | dolorously property | 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/pg66819/22/72/