The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Slave Boy, sentence 93
“But the handsomest of people are sometimes rotten at heart, and the handsomest of cakes are sometimes unfit to be eaten.”
Who acts: handsomest · What happens: be, eat · To what, where: heart
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 (handsomest), 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 | _ | 4 handsomest | punct |
| 2 | But | but | CCONJ | _ | 4 handsomest | cc |
| 3 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 4 handsomest | det |
| 4 | handsomest | handsome | ADJ | Degree=Sup | root | root |
| 5 | of | of | ADP | _ | 6 people | case |
| 6 | people | people | NOUN | Number=Plur | 9 rotten | obl |
| 7 | are | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 9 rotten | cop |
| 8 | sometimes | sometimes | ADV | PronType=Ind | 9 rotten | advmod |
| 9 | rotten | rotten | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 4 handsomest | parataxis |
| 10 | at | at | ADP | _ | 11 heart | case |
| 11 | heart | heart | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 rotten | obl |
| 12 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 15 handsomest | punct |
| 13 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 15 handsomest | cc |
| 14 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 15 handsomest | det |
| 15 | handsomest | handsome | ADJ | Degree=Sup | 20 unfit | nsubj |
| 16 | of | of | ADP | _ | 17 cakes | case |
| 17 | cakes | cake | NOUN | Number=Plur | 15 handsomest | obl |
| 18 | are | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 20 unfit | cop |
| 19 | sometimes | sometimes | ADV | PronType=Ind | 20 unfit | advmod |
| 20 | unfit | unfit | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 9 rotten | conj |
| 21 | to | to | PART | _ | 23 eaten | mark |
| 22 | be | be | AUX | VerbForm=Inf | 23 eaten | aux:pass |
| 23 | eaten | eat | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 20 unfit | advcl |
| 24 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 20 unfit | punct |
| 25 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 4 handsomest | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is in a quote | present | heart | of people; rotten, sometimes property | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | is in a quote | present | the handsomest of cakes | sometimes, unfit property | tree rules | ||||
| 3 | eat in a quote | to-infinitive · passive | the handsomest of cakes not said here | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V» |
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/pg66819/29/93/