The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Triumph of Music, sentence 63
He held the kantele in his hands and began to play upon it, softly, gently.
Who acts: Wainamoinen · What happens: hold, begin, play · To what, where: kantele, hands
This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Triumph of Music. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Wainamoinen), 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 held | nsubj |
| 2 | held | hold | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 4 kantele | det |
| 4 | kantele | kantele | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 held | obj |
| 5 | in | in | ADP | _ | 7 hands | case |
| 6 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 7 hands | nmod:poss |
| 7 | hands | hand | NOUN | Number=Plur | 4 kantele | nmod |
| 8 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 9 began | cc |
| 9 | began | begin | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 2 held | conj |
| 10 | to | to | PART | _ | 11 play | mark |
| 11 | play | play | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 9 began | xcomp |
| 12 | upon | upon | ADP | _ | 13 it | case |
| 13 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 11 play | obl |
| 14 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 15 softly | punct |
| 15 | softly | softly | ADV | _ | 11 play | advmod |
| 16 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 17 gently | punct |
| 17 | gently | gently | ADV | _ | 11 play | advmod |
| 18 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 held | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | hold | past | Wainamoinen | the kantele | Wainamoinen's hands | vn keep-15.2 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent kantele=Theme in hand=Location | |||
| 2 | begin | past | Wainamoinen not said here | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality | |||||
| 3 | play | to-infinitive | Wainamoinen not said here | upon kantele; gently, softly property | vn performance-26.7-1 «NP V»: agent=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/pg66819/35/63/