The grateful elephant, Opening, part 16, sentence 45
Is it not like a candle, which, when it is exposed to the wind, flickers for an instant and goes out?
Who acts: instant, candle · What happens: not be, expose, flicker, go out · To what, where: 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 (instant, candle), 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 | 6 candle | cop |
| 2 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 6 candle | nsubj |
| 3 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 6 candle | advmod |
| 4 | like | like | ADP | _ | 6 candle | case |
| 5 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 6 candle | det |
| 6 | candle | candle | NOUN | Number=Sing | 18 flickers | nsubj |
| 7 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 13 exposed | punct |
| 8 | which | which | PRON | PronType=Rel | 13 exposed | obj |
| 9 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 13 exposed | punct |
| 10 | when | when | ADV | PronType=Int | 13 exposed | advmod |
| 11 | it | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 13 exposed | nsubj:pass |
| 12 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 13 exposed | aux:pass |
| 13 | exposed | expose | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 6 candle | acl |
| 14 | to | to | ADP | _ | 16 wind | case |
| 15 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 16 wind | det |
| 16 | wind | wind | NOUN | Number=Sing | 13 exposed | obl |
| 17 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 6 candle | punct |
| 18 | flickers | flicker | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 19 | for | for | ADP | _ | 21 instant | case |
| 20 | an | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 21 instant | det |
| 21 | instant | instant | NOUN | Number=Sing | 18 flickers | obl |
| 22 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 23 goes | cc |
| 23 | goes | go | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 18 flickers | conj |
| 24 | out | out | ADP | _ | 23 goes | compound:prt |
| 25 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 18 flickers | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | not is | present | instant | like a candle | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | expose | present · passive | instant | to the wind; a candle obj | tree rules | ||||
| 3 | flicker | present | a candle | for a instant | vn light_emission-43.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | ||||
| 4 | go out | present | a candle not said here | vn interact-36.6 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
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/pg74064/16/45/