The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Slave Boy, sentence 104
He picked up the broken blade and tried to fit it in the handle.
Who acts: slave · What happens: pick up, break, try, fit · To what, where: broken blade, knife, handle
This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Slave Boy. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (slave), 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 | He | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 2 picked | nsubj |
| 2 | picked | pick | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | up | up | ADP | _ | 2 picked | compound:prt |
| 4 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 6 blade | det |
| 5 | broken | break | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 6 blade | amod |
| 6 | blade | blade | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 picked | obj |
| 7 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 8 tried | cc |
| 8 | tried | try | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 2 picked | conj |
| 9 | to | to | PART | _ | 10 fit | mark |
| 10 | fit | fit | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 8 tried | xcomp |
| 11 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 10 fit | obj |
| 12 | in | in | ADP | _ | 14 handle | case |
| 13 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 14 handle | det |
| 14 | handle | handle | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 fit | obl |
| 15 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 picked | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | pick up | past | slave | the broken blade | vn discover-84-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent blade=Topic | ||||
| 2 | break | participle | vn hurt-40.8.3-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Patient | ||||||
| 3 | try | past | slave not said here | vn try-61.1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality | |||||
| 4 | fit not said to happen | to-infinitive | slave not said here | knife | the handle | vn funnel-9.3-1 «NP V NP PP.trajectory»: agent=Agent it=Theme in handle=Trajectory |
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/pg66819/29/104/