The grateful elephant, Opening, part 17, sentence 99
The fingers were supposed to “point off” evil spirits.
What happens: suppose, point off · To what, where: fingers, evil spirits · Speech: someone speaks here
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: 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 | The | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 2 fingers | det |
| 2 | fingers | finger | NOUN | Number=Plur | 4 supposed | nsubj:pass |
| 3 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 4 supposed | aux:pass |
| 4 | supposed | suppose | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | root | root |
| 5 | to | to | ADP | _ | 4 supposed | obl |
| 6 | “ | " | PUNCT | _ | 7 point | punct |
| 7 | point | point | VERB | Mood=Imp VerbForm=Fin | 4 supposed | parataxis |
| 8 | off | off | ADP | _ | 7 point | compound:prt |
| 9 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 7 point | punct |
| 10 | evil | evil | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 11 spirits | amod |
| 11 | spirits | spirit | NOUN | Number=Plur | 7 point | obj |
| 12 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 4 supposed | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | suppose | past · passive | the fingers | vn consider-29.9-2 «NP V NP ADJ»: subject=Attribute clause=Theme | |||||
| 2 | point off in a quote | infinitive | evil spirits | vn wink-40.3.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent spirit=Patient |
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/pg74064/17/99/