The grateful elephant, Opening, part 10, sentence 46
A mighty river began to flow, and the multitude sank down in the curds and were unable to extricate themselves.
Who acts: mighty river, multitude · What happens: begin, flow, sink down, be, extricate · To what, where: curds
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 (mighty river, multitude), 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 | A | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 3 river | det |
| 2 | mighty | mighty | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 3 river | amod |
| 3 | river | river | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 began | nsubj |
| 4 | began | begin | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 5 | to | to | PART | _ | 6 flow | mark |
| 6 | flow | flow | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 4 began | xcomp |
| 7 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 11 sank | punct |
| 8 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 11 sank | cc |
| 9 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 10 multitude | det |
| 10 | multitude | multitude | NOUN | Number=Sing | 11 sank | nsubj |
| 11 | sank | sink | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 4 began | advcl |
| 12 | down | down | ADV | _ | 11 sank | advmod |
| 13 | in | in | ADP | _ | 15 curds | case |
| 14 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 15 curds | det |
| 15 | curds | curd | NOUN | Number=Plur | 11 sank | obl |
| 16 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 18 unable | cc |
| 17 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 18 unable | cop |
| 18 | unable | unable | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 4 began | conj |
| 19 | to | to | PART | _ | 20 extricate | mark |
| 20 | extricate | extricate | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 18 unable | xcomp |
| 21 | themselves | themselves | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs Reflex=Yes | 20 extricate | obj |
| 22 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 4 began | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | begin | past | a mighty river | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality | |||||
| 2 | flow | to-infinitive | a mighty river not said here | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | |||||
| 3 | sink down | past | the multitude | the curds | down property | vn other_cos-45.4 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient | |||
| 4 | is | past | a mighty river not said here | unable property | tree rules | ||||
| 5 | extricate | to-infinitive | a mighty river not said here | curds = curd | tree rules |
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/pg74064/10/46/