The grateful elephant, Opening, part 11, sentence 94
How much more so must it be to human beings, from whom it is as difficult to wring a penny as it is to skin a flint!”
Who acts: begging · What happens: be, wring · To what, where: human beings, penny
This is a sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 11. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (begging), 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 | How | how | ADV | PronType=Int | 2 much | advmod |
| 2 | much | much | ADV | _ | 3 more | advmod |
| 3 | more | more | ADV | Degree=Cmp | 5 must | advmod |
| 4 | so | so | ADV | _ | 5 must | advmod |
| 5 | must | must | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 6 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 10 beings | nsubj |
| 7 | be | be | AUX | VerbForm=Inf | 10 beings | cop |
| 8 | to | to | ADP | _ | 10 beings | case |
| 9 | human | human | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 10 beings | amod |
| 10 | beings | being | NOUN | Number=Plur | 5 must | parataxis |
| 11 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 17 difficult | punct |
| 12 | from | from | ADP | _ | 13 whom | case |
| 13 | whom | whom | PRON | PronType=Rel | 17 difficult | obl |
| 14 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 17 difficult | expl |
| 15 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 17 difficult | cop |
| 16 | as | as | ADP | _ | 17 difficult | case |
| 17 | difficult | difficult | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 10 beings | conj |
| 18 | to | to | PART | _ | 19 wring | mark |
| 19 | wring | wring | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 17 difficult | csubj |
| 20 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 21 penny | det |
| 21 | penny | penny | NOUN | Number=Sing | 19 wring | obj |
| 22 | as | as | ADP | _ | 26 skin | case |
| 23 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 26 skin | nsubj |
| 24 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 26 skin | cop |
| 25 | to | to | PART | _ | 26 skin | mark |
| 26 | skin | skin | NOUN | Number=Sing | 19 wring | obl |
| 27 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 28 flint | det |
| 28 | flint | flint | NOUN | Number=Sing | 19 wring | obj |
| 29 | ! | ! | PUNCT | _ | 10 beings | punct |
| 30 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 5 must | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is | infinitive | begging | to human beings | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | is | present | begging not said here | human beings | difficult property | tree rules | |||
| 3 | wring | to-infinitive | a penny | a flint obj | vn funnel-9.3-1 «NP V NP ADVP»: agent=Agent penny=Theme flint=Destination | ||||
| 4 | is | present | begging | as skin | 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/pg74064/11/94/