The grateful elephant, Opening, part 10, sentence 22
He broke off a twig and let it fall on the boar’s head.
Who acts: man, twig · What happens: break off, let, fall · To what, where: twig, head
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 (man, twig), 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 | 2 broke | nsubj |
| 2 | broke | break | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | off | off | ADP | _ | 2 broke | compound:prt |
| 4 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 5 twig | det |
| 5 | twig | twig | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 broke | obj |
| 6 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 7 let | cc |
| 7 | let | let | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 2 broke | conj |
| 8 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 7 let | obj |
| 9 | fall | fall | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 7 let | xcomp |
| 10 | on | on | ADP | _ | 14 head | case |
| 11 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 12 boar | det |
| 12 | boar | boar | NOUN | Number=Sing | 14 head | nmod:poss |
| 13 | ’s | 's | PART | _ | 12 boar | case |
| 14 | head | head | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 fall | obl |
| 15 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 broke | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | break off | past | man | a twig | vn hurt-40.8.3-1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer twig=Patient | ||||
| 2 | let | infinitive | man not said here | twig | tree rules | ||||
| 3 | fall | infinitive | twig not said here | the boar's head | vn occur-48.3 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme on head=Location |
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/pg74064/10/22/