The grateful elephant, Opening, part 3, sentence 117
He never spoke to anybody without either reviling him or striking him.
Who acts: Wicked · What happens: not speak, revile, strike · To what, where: Wicked · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Wicked), 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 | He | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 3 spoke | nsubj |
| 2 | never | never | ADV | PronType=Neg | 3 spoke | advmod |
| 3 | spoke | speak | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | to | to | ADP | _ | 5 anybody | case |
| 5 | anybody | anybody | PRON | Number=Sing PronType=Ind | 3 spoke | obl |
| 6 | without | without | SCONJ | _ | 8 reviling | mark |
| 7 | either | either | CCONJ | _ | 8 reviling | cc:preconj |
| 8 | reviling | revile | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 3 spoke | advcl |
| 9 | him | he | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 8 reviling | obj |
| 10 | or | or | CCONJ | _ | 11 striking | cc |
| 11 | striking | strike | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 8 reviling | conj |
| 12 | him | he | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 11 striking | obj |
| 13 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 spoke | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | not speak speech: other | past | Wicked | to anybody | vn talk-37.5 «NP V PP.co-agent»: agent=Agent to anybody=Co-Agent | ||||
| 2 | revile | gerund | Wicked not said here | Wicked | vn judgment-33.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Theme | ||||
| 3 | strike | gerund | Wicked not said here | Wicked | vn hit-18.1-1 «NP V NP PP»: agent=Agent he=Instrument |
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/pg74064/3/117/