The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Weeping Ship, sentence 111
Was it a sea-gull breasting the morning gale and crying to its mate in the shelter of the ragged cliffs?
Who acts: spray, sea gull · What happens: be, breast, cry · To what, where: sea gull, morning gale, mate, shelter
This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Weeping Ship. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (spray, sea gull), 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 | Was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 6 gull | cop |
| 2 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 6 gull | nsubj |
| 3 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 6 gull | det |
| 4 | sea | sea | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 gull | compound |
| 5 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 4 sea | punct |
| 6 | gull | gull | NOUN | Number=Sing | root | root |
| 7 | breasting | breast | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 6 gull | acl |
| 8 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 10 gale | det |
| 9 | morning | morning | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 gale | compound |
| 10 | gale | gale | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 breasting | obj |
| 11 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 12 crying | cc |
| 12 | crying | cry | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 7 breasting | conj |
| 13 | to | to | ADP | _ | 15 mate | case |
| 14 | its | its | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 15 mate | nmod:poss |
| 15 | mate | mate | NOUN | Number=Sing | 12 crying | obl |
| 16 | in | in | ADP | _ | 18 shelter | case |
| 17 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 18 shelter | det |
| 18 | shelter | shelter | NOUN | Number=Sing | 12 crying | obl |
| 19 | of | of | ADP | _ | 22 cliffs | case |
| 20 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 22 cliffs | det |
| 21 | ragged | ragged | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 22 cliffs | amod |
| 22 | cliffs | cliff | NOUN | Number=Plur | 18 shelter | nmod |
| 23 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 6 gull | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is a | past | spray | a sea gull | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | breast | gerund | a sea gull not said here | the morning gale | vn confront-98 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent gale=Theme | ||||
| 3 | cry speech: express | gerund | a sea gull not said here | spray's mate | the shelter of the ragged cliffs | vn manner_speaking-37.3 «NP V PP.recipient»: agent=Agent to mate=Recipient |
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/pg66819/33/111/