The grateful elephant, Opening, part 10, sentence 111

One day, returning with food, he lay down under a cocoanut leaf and thought: “If this earth should collapse, what would ever become of me?”

Who acts: One day, foot, earth · What happens: return, lie down, think, collapse, become · To what, where: cocoanut leaf · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 10. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (One day, foot, earth), 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	One	one	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	2 day	nummod
2	day	day	NOUN	Number=Sing	9 lay	obl:unmarked
3	,	,	PUNCT	_	4 returning	punct
4	returning	return	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	2 day	acl
5	with	with	ADP	_	6 food	case
6	food	food	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 returning	obl
7	,	,	PUNCT	_	2 day	punct
8	he	he	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	9 lay	nsubj
9	lay	lie	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
10	down	down	ADP	_	9 lay	compound:prt
11	under	under	ADP	_	14 leaf	case
12	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	14 leaf	det
13	cocoanut	cocoanut	NOUN	Number=Sing	14 leaf	compound
14	leaf	leaf	NOUN	Number=Sing	9 lay	obl
15	and	and	CCONJ	_	16 thought	cc
16	thought	think	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	9 lay	conj
17	:	:	PUNCT	_	23 collapse	punct
18	“	"	PUNCT	_	23 collapse	punct
19	If	if	SCONJ	_	23 collapse	mark
20	this	this	DET	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	21 earth	det
21	earth	earth	NOUN	Number=Sing	23 collapse	nsubj
22	should	should	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	23 collapse	aux
23	collapse	collapse	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	16 thought	ccomp
24	,	,	PUNCT	_	28 become	punct
25	what	what	PRON	PronType=Int	28 become	nsubj
26	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	28 become	aux
27	ever	ever	ADV	PronType=Ind	28 become	advmod
28	become	become	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	23 collapse	conj
29	of	of	ADP	_	30 me	case
30	me	I	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	28 become	obl
31	?	?	PUNCT	_	23 collapse	punct
32	”	"	PUNCT	_	23 collapse	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	where	when	other	roles by
1	return	gerund	One day not said here			with food	vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
2	lie down	past	foot	a cocoanut leaf	day		vn assuming_position-50 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Agent under leaf=Location
3	think speech: other	past	foot not said here				vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Theme
4	collapse a condition, not said to happen, in a quote	should	this earth				vn other_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient
5	become in a quote	would			ever	of foot; what nsubj	vn become-109.1-1-1 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Patient

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 grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Project Gutenberg book 74064 (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/pg74064/10/111/

🌲 The grateful elephant, Opening, part 10, sentence 111

The tree

Pragmatics

The grateful elephant, Opening, part 10, sentence 111