The grateful elephant, Opening, part 10, sentence 141
Said the elephants: “We don’t know; the lions know.”
Who acts: We, lions · What happens: say, not know, know · To what, where: elephants · 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 (We, lions), 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 | Said | say | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 2 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 3 elephants | det |
| 3 | elephants | elephant | NOUN | Number=Plur | 1 Said | obj |
| 4 | : | : | PUNCT | _ | 9 know | punct |
| 5 | “ | " | PUNCT | _ | 9 know | punct |
| 6 | We | we | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs | 9 know | nsubj |
| 7 | do | do | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=1 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 9 know | aux |
| 8 | n’t | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 9 know | advmod |
| 9 | know | know | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 1 Said | ccomp |
| 10 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 13 know | punct |
| 11 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 12 lions | det |
| 12 | lions | lion | NOUN | Number=Plur | 13 know | nsubj |
| 13 | know | know | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 9 know | parataxis |
| 14 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 9 know | punct |
| 15 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 9 know | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | say speech: assert | past | the elephants | tree rules | |||||
| 2 | not know in a quote | present · do-support | We | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer | |||||
| 3 | know in a quote | present | the lions | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer |
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/pg74064/10/141/