The grateful elephant, Opening, part 2, sentence 18
Several of the stories purport to relate incidents in Gotama’s previous states of existence as an animal.
Who acts: Several stories · What happens: purport, relate · To what, where: incidents, previous states
This is a sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Several stories), 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 | Several | several | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 4 stories | amod |
| 2 | of | of | ADP | _ | 4 stories | case |
| 3 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 4 stories | det |
| 4 | stories | story | NOUN | Number=Plur | 5 purport | nsubj |
| 5 | purport | purport | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 6 | to | to | PART | _ | 7 relate | mark |
| 7 | relate | relate | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 5 purport | xcomp |
| 8 | incidents | incident | NOUN | Number=Plur | 7 relate | obj |
| 9 | in | in | ADP | _ | 13 states | case |
| 10 | Gotama | Gotama | PROPN | Number=Sing | 13 states | nmod:poss |
| 11 | ’s | 's | PART | _ | 10 Gotama | case |
| 12 | previous | previous | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 13 states | amod |
| 13 | states | state | NOUN | Number=Plur | 7 relate | obl |
| 14 | of | of | ADP | _ | 15 existence | case |
| 15 | existence | existence | NOUN | Number=Sing | 13 states | nmod |
| 16 | as | as | ADP | _ | 18 animal | case |
| 17 | an | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 18 animal | det |
| 18 | animal | animal | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 relate | obl |
| 19 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 5 purport | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | purport | present | the Several stories | tree rules | |||||
| 2 | relate | to-infinitive | the Several stories not said here | incidents | in Gotama's previous states of existence goal; as a animal | vn involve-107.1 «NP V NP PP.goal»: agent=Agent incident=Theme in state=Goal |
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/pg74064/2/18/