The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Pursuit, sentence 40
“No sailor ever saw a white cloud in the northwest sitting low upon the water.
Who acts: sailor, northwest · What happens: see, sit · To what, where: white cloud, northwest, water
This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Pursuit. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (sailor, northwest), 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 | _ | 5 saw | punct |
| 2 | No | no | DET | PronType=Neg | 3 sailor | det |
| 3 | sailor | sailor | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 saw | nsubj |
| 4 | ever | ever | ADV | PronType=Ind | 5 saw | advmod |
| 5 | saw | see | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 6 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 8 cloud | det |
| 7 | white | white | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 8 cloud | amod |
| 8 | cloud | cloud | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 saw | obj |
| 9 | in | in | ADP | _ | 11 northwest | case |
| 10 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 11 northwest | det |
| 11 | northwest | northwest | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 cloud | nmod |
| 12 | sitting | sit | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 11 northwest | acl |
| 13 | low | low | ADV | Degree=Pos | 12 sitting | advmod |
| 14 | upon | upon | ADP | _ | 16 water | case |
| 15 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 16 water | det |
| 16 | water | water | NOUN | Number=Sing | 12 sitting | obl |
| 17 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 5 saw | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | see in a quote | past | no sailor | a white cloud | the northwest | ever | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer cloud=Stimulus | ||
| 2 | sit in a quote | gerund | the northwest not said here | the water | low property | vn assuming_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent upon water=Location |
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/pg66819/37/40/