The grateful elephant, Opening, part 17, sentence 108
_ Before beginning play, dicers would draw a circle on the ground or floor.
Who acts: dicers · What happens: begin, draw · To what, where: circle, ground
This is a sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 17. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (dicers), 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 | _ | _ | PUNCT | _ | 8 draw | punct |
| 2 | Before | before | ADP | _ | 4 play | case |
| 3 | beginning | begin | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 4 play | amod |
| 4 | play | play | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 draw | obl |
| 5 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 4 play | punct |
| 6 | dicers | dicer | NOUN | Number=Plur | 8 draw | nsubj |
| 7 | would | would | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 8 draw | aux |
| 8 | draw | draw | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | root | root |
| 9 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 10 circle | det |
| 10 | circle | circle | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 draw | obj |
| 11 | on | on | ADP | _ | 13 ground | case |
| 12 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 13 ground | det |
| 13 | ground | ground | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 circle | nmod |
| 14 | or | or | CCONJ | _ | 15 floor | cc |
| 15 | floor | floor | NOUN | Number=Sing | 13 ground | conj |
| 16 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 8 draw | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | begin | gerund | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality | ||||||
| 2 | draw | would | dicers | a circle | the ground or floor | before beginning play | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent circle=Theme on ground=Destination |
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/pg74064/17/108/