The grateful elephant, Opening, part 5, sentence 37

Before their wings had grown and while they were yet unable to fly, the Great Being came to that spot with his retinue of eighty thousand elephants in search of food.

Who acts: wings, eggs, Great · What happens: grow, be, fly, search · To what, where: food

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 (wings, eggs, Great), 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	Before	before	SCONJ	_	5 grown	mark
2	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	3 wings	nmod:poss
3	wings	wing	NOUN	Number=Plur	5 grown	nsubj
4	had	have	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	5 grown	aux
5	grown	grow	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part	18 came	advcl
6	and	and	CCONJ	_	11 unable	cc
7	while	while	SCONJ	_	11 unable	mark
8	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	11 unable	nsubj
9	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	11 unable	cop
10	yet	yet	ADV	_	11 unable	advmod
11	unable	unable	ADJ	Degree=Pos	5 grown	conj
12	to	to	PART	_	13 fly	mark
13	fly	fly	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	11 unable	xcomp
14	,	,	PUNCT	_	5 grown	punct
15	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	16 Great	det
16	Great	great	ADJ	Degree=Pos	18 came	nsubj
17	Being	be	AUX	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	18 came	cop
18	came	come	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
19	to	to	ADP	_	21 spot	case
20	that	that	DET	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	21 spot	det
21	spot	spot	NOUN	Number=Sing	18 came	obl
22	with	with	ADP	_	24 retinue	case
23	his	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	24 retinue	nmod:poss
24	retinue	retinue	NOUN	Number=Sing	21 spot	nmod
25	of	of	ADP	_	28 elephants	case
26	eighty	eighty	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	27 thousand	compound
27	thousand	thousand	NUM	NumForm=Word NumType=Card	28 elephants	nummod
28	elephants	elephant	NOUN	Number=Plur	24 retinue	nmod
29	in	in	ADP	_	30 search	case
30	search	search	NOUN	Number=Sing	28 elephants	nmod
31	of	of	ADP	_	32 food	case
32	food	food	NOUN	Number=Sing	30 search	nmod
33	.	.	PUNCT	_	18 came	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	when	other	roles by
1	grow	past · perfect	eggs's wings				vn appear-48.1.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
2	is	past	eggs = egg		yet	unable property	tree rules
3	fly	to-infinitive	eggs = egg not said here				vn spatial_configuration-47.6-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
4	is	gerund	the Great			to that spot with Buddha's retinue of thousand elephants in search of food; come property	tree rules
5	search			food			nom search «act transitive»: of=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/pg74064/5/37/

🌲 The grateful elephant, Opening, part 5, sentence 37

The tree

Pragmatics

The grateful elephant, Opening, part 5, sentence 37