The grateful elephant, Opening, part 5, sentence 35
At that time a tiny female quail laid her eggs in the elephants’ stamping-ground.
Who acts: tiny female quail, elephants · What happens: lay, ', stamp · To what, where: eggs, ground
This is a sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 5. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (tiny female quail, elephants), 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 | At | at | ADP | _ | 3 time | case |
| 2 | that | that | DET | Number=Sing PronType=Dem | 3 time | det |
| 3 | time | time | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 laid | obl |
| 4 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 7 quail | det |
| 5 | tiny | tiny | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 7 quail | amod |
| 6 | female | female | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 7 quail | amod |
| 7 | quail | quail | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 laid | nsubj |
| 8 | laid | lay | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 9 | her | her | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 10 eggs | nmod:poss |
| 10 | eggs | egg | NOUN | Number=Plur | 8 laid | obj |
| 11 | in | in | SCONJ | _ | 14 ’ | mark |
| 12 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 13 elephants | det |
| 13 | elephants | elephant | NOUN | Number=Plur | 14 ’ | nsubj |
| 14 | ’ | ' | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 8 laid | advcl |
| 15 | stamping | stamp | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 14 ’ | xcomp |
| 16 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 17 ground | punct |
| 17 | ground | ground | NOUN | Number=Sing | 15 stamping | obl |
| 18 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 8 laid | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | lay | past | a tiny female quail | Elephant's eggs | time | vn create-26.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent egg=Result | |||
| 2 | ' | present | the elephants | tree rules | |||||
| 3 | stamp | gerund | the elephants not said here | ground | vn image_impression-25.1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
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/pg74064/5/35/