The grateful elephant, Opening, part 7, sentence 98
“It may be because these people are afraid of me that they refrain from mentioning faults in me and speak only of my good qualities.”
Who acts: fault, people · What happens: be, refrain, mention, speak · To what, where: faults · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 7. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (fault, people), 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 | “ | " | PUNCT | _ | 9 afraid | punct |
| 2 | It | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 9 afraid | nsubj |
| 3 | may | may | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 9 afraid | aux |
| 4 | be | be | AUX | VerbForm=Inf | 9 afraid | cop |
| 5 | because | because | SCONJ | _ | 9 afraid | mark |
| 6 | these | this | DET | Number=Plur PronType=Dem | 7 people | det |
| 7 | people | people | NOUN | Number=Plur | 9 afraid | nsubj |
| 8 | are | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 9 afraid | cop |
| 9 | afraid | afraid | ADJ | Degree=Pos | root | root |
| 10 | of | of | ADP | _ | 11 me | case |
| 11 | me | I | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 9 afraid | obl |
| 12 | that | that | SCONJ | _ | 14 refrain | mark |
| 13 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 14 refrain | nsubj |
| 14 | refrain | refrain | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 9 afraid | advcl |
| 15 | from | from | SCONJ | _ | 16 mentioning | mark |
| 16 | mentioning | mention | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 14 refrain | advcl |
| 17 | faults | fault | NOUN | Number=Plur | 16 mentioning | obj |
| 18 | in | in | ADP | _ | 19 me | case |
| 19 | me | I | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 16 mentioning | obl |
| 20 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 21 speak | cc |
| 21 | speak | speak | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 14 refrain | conj |
| 22 | only | only | ADV | _ | 26 qualities | advmod |
| 23 | of | of | ADP | _ | 26 qualities | case |
| 24 | my | my | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Sing Person=1 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 26 qualities | nmod:poss |
| 25 | good | good | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 26 qualities | amod |
| 26 | qualities | quality | NOUN | Number=Plur | 21 speak | obl |
| 27 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 9 afraid | punct |
| 28 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 9 afraid | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is in a quote | may | fault | of place; this people nsubj; afraid property | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | refrain in a quote | present | people | vn refrain-69 «NP V»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 3 | mention speech: other in a quote | gerund | people not said here | faults | in place | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent fault=Topic | |||
| 4 | speak speech: other in a quote | present | people not said here | of my good qualities | vn talk-37.5 «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/pg74064/7/98/