The grateful elephant, Opening, part 8, sentence 84
Along the road, at a certain place in the forest, five hundred Despatcher-thieves were in the habit of committing outrages on travelers.
Who acts: certain place, habit · What happens: be, commit · To what, where: habit, outrages, travelers
This is a sentence of «The grateful elephant» by Eugene Watson Burlingame, Opening, part 8. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (certain place, habit), 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 | Along | along | ADP | _ | 3 road | case |
| 2 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 3 road | det |
| 3 | road | road | NOUN | Number=Sing | 21 habit | obl |
| 4 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 8 place | punct |
| 5 | at | at | ADP | _ | 8 place | case |
| 6 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 8 place | det |
| 7 | certain | certain | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 8 place | amod |
| 8 | place | place | NOUN | Number=Sing | 21 habit | nsubj |
| 9 | in | in | ADP | _ | 11 forest | case |
| 10 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 11 forest | det |
| 11 | forest | forest | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 place | nmod |
| 12 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 14 hundred | punct |
| 13 | five | five | NUM | NumForm=Word NumType=Card | 14 hundred | compound |
| 14 | hundred | hundred | NUM | NumForm=Word NumType=Card | 17 thieves | nummod |
| 15 | Despatcher | Despatcher | PROPN | Number=Sing | 17 thieves | compound |
| 16 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 15 Despatcher | punct |
| 17 | thieves | thief | NOUN | Number=Plur | 21 habit | nsubj |
| 18 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 21 habit | cop |
| 19 | in | in | ADP | _ | 21 habit | case |
| 20 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 21 habit | det |
| 21 | habit | habit | NOUN | Number=Sing | root | root |
| 22 | of | of | SCONJ | _ | 23 committing | mark |
| 23 | committing | commit | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 21 habit | acl |
| 24 | outrages | outrage | NOUN | Number=Plur | 23 committing | obj |
| 25 | on | on | ADP | _ | 26 travelers | case |
| 26 | travelers | traveler | NOUN | Number=Plur | 23 committing | obl |
| 27 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 21 habit | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is | past | a certain place in the forest | the habit | along the road; hundred Despatcher thieves nsubj | tree rules | |||
| 2 | commit | gerund | the habit not said here | outrages | travelers | vn confine-92-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent outrage=Theme |
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/pg74064/8/84/