The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Wedding Feast, sentence 51
Or is it only the billows breaking on the beach, or the wind whistling and moaning among the pines?”
Who acts: army, billows, wind · What happens: be, break, whistle, moan · To what, where: billows, beach, pines
This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Wedding Feast. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (army, billows, 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 | Or | or | CCONJ | _ | 6 billows | cc |
| 2 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 6 billows | cop |
| 3 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 6 billows | nsubj |
| 4 | only | only | ADV | _ | 6 billows | advmod |
| 5 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 6 billows | det |
| 6 | billows | billow | NOUN | Number=Plur | root | root |
| 7 | breaking | break | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 6 billows | acl |
| 8 | on | on | ADP | _ | 10 beach | case |
| 9 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 10 beach | det |
| 10 | beach | beach | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 breaking | obl |
| 11 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 14 wind | punct |
| 12 | or | or | CCONJ | _ | 14 wind | cc |
| 13 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 14 wind | det |
| 14 | wind | wind | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 billows | appos |
| 15 | whistling | whistle | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 14 wind | acl |
| 16 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 17 moaning | cc |
| 17 | moaning | moan | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 15 whistling | conj |
| 18 | among | among | ADP | _ | 20 pines | case |
| 19 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 20 pines | det |
| 20 | pines | pine | NOUN | Number=Plur | 17 moaning | obl |
| 21 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 15 whistling | punct |
| 22 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 14 wind | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is a | present | army | the billows | the wind appos | tree rules | |||
| 2 | break | gerund | the billows not said here | the beach | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme on beach=Location | ||||
| 3 | whistle | gerund | the wind not said here | vn manner_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 4 | moan | gerund | the wind not said here | the pines | vn sound_emission-43.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme among pine=Location |
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/pg66819/27/51/