The grateful elephant, Opening, part 2, sentence 20
As a merciful elephant (4), he spares the life of a tiny quail.
Who acts: elephant · What happens: spare · To what, where: life
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 (elephant), 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 | As | as | ADP | _ | 4 elephant | case |
| 2 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 4 elephant | det |
| 3 | merciful | merciful | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 4 elephant | amod |
| 4 | elephant | elephant | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 spares | obl |
| 5 | ( | ( | PUNCT | _ | 6 4 | punct |
| 6 | 4 | 4 | NUM | NumForm=Digit NumType=Card | 4 elephant | appos |
| 7 | ) | ) | PUNCT | _ | 6 4 | punct |
| 8 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 4 elephant | punct |
| 9 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 10 spares | nsubj |
| 10 | spares | spare | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 11 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 12 life | det |
| 12 | life | life | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 spares | obj |
| 13 | of | of | ADP | _ | 16 quail | case |
| 14 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 16 quail | det |
| 15 | tiny | tiny | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 16 quail | amod |
| 16 | quail | quail | NOUN | Number=Sing | 12 life | nmod |
| 17 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 10 spares | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | spare | present | elephant | the life of a tiny quail | as a merciful elephant | vn bill-54.5 «NP V NP NP.asset»: agent=Agent life=Asset |
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/pg74064/2/20/