The grateful elephant, Opening, part 16, sentence 44
Is not this body of ours like a bubble in the water, which bursts in an instant and vanishes?
Who acts: bubble · What happens: not be, burst, vanish · To what, where: body, instant
This is a sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 16. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (bubble), 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 | Is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 4 body | cop |
| 2 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 4 body | advmod |
| 3 | this | this | DET | Number=Sing PronType=Dem | 4 body | det |
| 4 | body | body | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 ours | csubj |
| 5 | of | of | ADP | _ | 6 ours | case |
| 6 | ours | our | PRON | Number=Plur Person=1 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | root | root |
| 7 | like | like | ADP | _ | 9 bubble | case |
| 8 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 9 bubble | det |
| 9 | bubble | bubble | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 ours | nmod |
| 10 | in | in | ADP | _ | 12 water | case |
| 11 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 12 water | det |
| 12 | water | water | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 bubble | nmod |
| 13 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 15 bursts | punct |
| 14 | which | which | PRON | PronType=Rel | 15 bursts | nsubj |
| 15 | bursts | burst | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 9 bubble | parataxis |
| 16 | in | in | ADP | _ | 18 instant | case |
| 17 | an | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 18 instant | det |
| 18 | instant | instant | NOUN | Number=Sing | 15 bursts | obl |
| 19 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 20 vanishes | cc |
| 20 | vanishes | vanish | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 15 bursts | conj |
| 21 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 6 ours | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | not is a | present | this body | tree rules | |||||
| 2 | burst | present | a bubble in the water | a instant | vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V PP.location»: agent=Theme in instant=Location | ||||
| 3 | vanish | present | a bubble in the water not said here | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme |
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/pg74064/16/44/