Wigwam stories told by North American Indians, XXXIII. the Chipmunk’s Black Stripes, sentence 18
The animals could not decide what was best, but the chipmunk kept saying: “Light will come.
Who acts: animals, chipmunk, Light · What happens: not decide, be, keep, say, come · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «Wigwam stories told by North American Indians» by Mary Catherine Judd, XXXIII. the Chipmunk’s Black Stripes. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (animals, chipmunk, Light), 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 animals | det |
| 2 | animals | animal | NOUN | Number=Plur | 5 decide | nsubj |
| 3 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 5 decide | aux |
| 4 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 5 decide | advmod |
| 5 | decide | decide | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | root | root |
| 6 | what | what | PRON | PronType=Int | 8 best | nsubj |
| 7 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 8 best | cop |
| 8 | best | good | ADJ | Degree=Sup | 5 decide | ccomp |
| 9 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 13 kept | punct |
| 10 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 13 kept | cc |
| 11 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 12 chipmunk | det |
| 12 | chipmunk | chipmunk | NOUN | Number=Sing | 13 kept | nsubj |
| 13 | kept | keep | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 5 decide | parataxis |
| 14 | saying | say | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 13 kept | xcomp |
| 15 | : | : | PUNCT | _ | 19 come | punct |
| 16 | “ | " | PUNCT | _ | 19 come | punct |
| 17 | Light | light | NOUN | Number=Sing | 19 come | nsubj |
| 18 | will | will | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 19 come | aux |
| 19 | come | come | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 14 saying | ccomp |
| 20 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 5 decide | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | not decide | could | the animals | vn correspond-36.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 2 | is | past | what nsubj; good property | tree rules | |||||
| 3 | keep | past | the chipmunk | tree rules | |||||
| 4 | say speech: assert | gerund | the chipmunk not said here | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | |||||
| 5 | come in a quote | future | Light | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
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: «Wigwam stories told by North American Indians» by Mary Catherine Judd, Project Gutenberg book 73136 (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/pg73136/58/18/