The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North, The Recipe, sentence 31
“Yes, yes, yes!” stammered the poor Smith, scarcely knowing what he said.
Who acts: poor Smith, Smith · What happens: stammer, know, say · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «The Sampo: A Wonder Tale of the Old North» by James Baldwin, The Recipe. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (poor Smith, Smith), 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 | _ | 9 stammered | punct |
| 2 | Yes | yes | INTJ | Polarity=Pos | 9 stammered | discourse |
| 3 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 2 Yes | punct |
| 4 | yes | yes | INTJ | Polarity=Pos | 2 Yes | discourse |
| 5 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 2 Yes | punct |
| 6 | yes | yes | INTJ | Polarity=Pos | 2 Yes | discourse |
| 7 | ! | ! | PUNCT | _ | 2 Yes | punct |
| 8 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 2 Yes | punct |
| 9 | stammered | stammer | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 10 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 12 Smith | det |
| 11 | poor | poor | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 12 Smith | amod |
| 12 | Smith | Smith | PROPN | Number=Sing | 9 stammered | obj |
| 13 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 15 knowing | punct |
| 14 | scarcely | scarcely | ADV | _ | 15 knowing | advmod |
| 15 | knowing | know | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 9 stammered | advcl |
| 16 | what | what | PRON | PronType=Int | 18 said | obj |
| 17 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 18 said | nsubj |
| 18 | said | say | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 15 knowing | ccomp |
| 19 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 9 stammered | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | stammer speech: other | past | the poor Smith | vn manner_speaking-37.3 «NP V»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 2 | know | gerund | the poor Smith not said here | scarcely property | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V how S_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus | ||||
| 3 | say speech: assert | past | Smith | what obj | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent what=Topic |
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/pg66819/9/31/