The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Famine, sentence 6
In Wainola the children were crying for food and the men and women were sitting on their doorsteps, silent, with stony faces, hopeless, helpless, despairing.
Who acts: children, men · What happens: cry, sit, despair · To what, where: Wainola, doorsteps
This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Famine. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (children, men), 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 | In | in | ADP | _ | 2 Wainola | case |
| 2 | Wainola | Wainola | PROPN | Number=Sing | 6 crying | obl |
| 3 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 4 children | det |
| 4 | children | child | NOUN | Number=Plur | 6 crying | nsubj |
| 5 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 6 crying | aux |
| 6 | crying | cry | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | root | root |
| 7 | for | for | ADP | _ | 8 food | case |
| 8 | food | food | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 crying | obl |
| 9 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 15 sitting | cc |
| 10 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 11 men | det |
| 11 | men | man | NOUN | Number=Plur | 15 sitting | nsubj |
| 12 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 13 women | cc |
| 13 | women | woman | NOUN | Number=Plur | 11 men | conj |
| 14 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 15 sitting | aux |
| 15 | sitting | sit | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 6 crying | conj |
| 16 | on | on | ADP | _ | 18 doorsteps | case |
| 17 | their | their | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 18 doorsteps | nmod:poss |
| 18 | doorsteps | doorstep | NOUN | Number=Plur | 15 sitting | obl |
| 19 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 20 silent | punct |
| 20 | silent | silent | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 18 doorsteps | conj |
| 21 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 24 faces | punct |
| 22 | with | with | ADP | _ | 24 faces | case |
| 23 | stony | stony | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 24 faces | amod |
| 24 | faces | face | NOUN | Number=Plur | 18 doorsteps | conj |
| 25 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 26 hopeless | punct |
| 26 | hopeless | hopeless | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 24 faces | amod |
| 27 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 28 helpless | punct |
| 28 | helpless | helpless | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 26 hopeless | conj |
| 29 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 30 despairing | punct |
| 30 | despairing | despair | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 6 crying | conj |
| 31 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 6 crying | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | cry speech: express | past · progressive | the children | Wainola | for food | vn sound_emission-43.2 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in wainola=Location | |||
| 2 | sit | past · progressive | the men and women | men's doorsteps and stony faces | vn assuming_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent on doorstep=Location | ||||
| 3 | despair | gerund | the children not said here | vn marvel-31.3 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
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/pg66819/32/6/