The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Field of Serpents, sentence 87
At first nothing but boiling vapor, scalding steam, shapeless white clouds could be distinguished.
What happens: boil, scald, distinguish · To what, where: steam, shapeless white clouds, nothing
This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Field of Serpents. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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 | At | at | ADP | _ | 3 nothing | case |
| 2 | first | first | ADV | NumForm=Word NumType=Ord | 3 nothing | advmod |
| 3 | nothing | nothing | PRON | Number=Sing PronType=Neg | 16 distinguished | obl |
| 4 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 6 vapor | cc |
| 5 | boiling | boil | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 6 vapor | amod |
| 6 | vapor | vapor | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 nothing | conj |
| 7 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 8 scalding | punct |
| 8 | scalding | scald | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 3 nothing | conj |
| 9 | steam | steam | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 scalding | obj |
| 10 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 3 nothing | punct |
| 11 | shapeless | shapeless | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 13 clouds | amod |
| 12 | white | white | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 13 clouds | amod |
| 13 | clouds | cloud | NOUN | Number=Plur | 16 distinguished | nsubj:pass |
| 14 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 16 distinguished | aux |
| 15 | be | be | AUX | VerbForm=Inf | 16 distinguished | aux:pass |
| 16 | distinguished | distinguish | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | root | root |
| 17 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 16 distinguished | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | boil | gerund | vn cooking-45.3 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient | ||||||
| 2 | scald | gerund | steam | vn cooking-45.3 «NP V NP.patient»: agent=Agent steam=Patient | |||||
| 3 | distinguish | could · passive | shapeless white clouds | nothing boiling vapor | vn distinguish-23.5-1 «NP V NP PP»: subject=Theme |
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/pg66819/24/87/