Maori folk-tales of the Port Hills, Canterbury, New Zealand, Rapaki: a Village By the Sea., sentence 56
He could scarcely have chosen a spot more snug about these savage Port Hills.
Who acts: conquistador · What happens: choose · To what, where: spot
This is a sentence of «Maori folk-tales of the Port Hills, Canterbury, New Zealand» by James Cowan, Rapaki: a Village By the Sea.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (conquistador), 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 | 5 chosen | nsubj |
| 2 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 5 chosen | aux |
| 3 | scarcely | scarcely | ADV | _ | 5 chosen | advmod |
| 4 | have | have | AUX | VerbForm=Inf | 5 chosen | aux |
| 5 | chosen | choose | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part | root | root |
| 6 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 7 spot | det |
| 7 | spot | spot | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 chosen | obj |
| 8 | more | more | ADJ | Degree=Cmp | 9 snug | amod |
| 9 | snug | snug | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 5 chosen | conj |
| 10 | about | about | ADP | _ | 14 Hills | case |
| 11 | these | this | PRON | Number=Plur PronType=Dem | 14 Hills | nsubj |
| 12 | savage | savage | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 14 Hills | amod |
| 13 | Port | Port | PROPN | Number=Sing | 14 Hills | compound |
| 14 | Hills | hill | NOUN | Number=Plur | 9 snug | obl |
| 15 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 5 chosen | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | choose | could · perfect | conquistador | a spot | scarcely property | vn get-13.5.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent spot=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: «Maori folk-tales of the Port Hills, Canterbury, New Zealand» by James Cowan, Project Gutenberg book 73766 (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/pg73766/12/56/