The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Weeping Ship, sentence 84
The Minstrel sat himself down in the prow and bade the young men begin their rowing.
Who acts: Minstrel, young men, men · What happens: sit down, begin, row · To what, where: Minstrel, prow, rowing
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 (Minstrel, young men, 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 | The | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 2 Minstrel | det |
| 2 | Minstrel | minstrel | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 sat | nsubj |
| 3 | sat | sit | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | himself | himself | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs Reflex=Yes | 3 sat | obj |
| 5 | down | down | ADP | _ | 3 sat | compound:prt |
| 6 | in | in | ADP | _ | 8 prow | case |
| 7 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 8 prow | det |
| 8 | prow | prow | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 sat | obl |
| 9 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 10 bade | cc |
| 10 | bade | bade | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 prow | conj |
| 11 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 13 men | det |
| 12 | young | young | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 13 men | amod |
| 13 | men | man | NOUN | Number=Plur | 14 begin | nsubj |
| 14 | begin | begin | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 3 sat | parataxis |
| 15 | their | their | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 16 rowing | nmod:poss |
| 16 | rowing | rowing | NOUN | Number=Sing | 14 begin | obj |
| 17 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 sat | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | sit down | past | the Minstrel | Minstrel | the prow and bade | tree rules | |||
| 2 | begin | present | the young men | men's rowing | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent rowing=Eventuality | ||||
| 3 | row | men = man | nom rowing «act transitive»: poss=agent |
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/pg66819/33/84/