Gleanings from Chinese folklore, Opening, sentence 30
The past could not chain her, the present could not bind her.
Who acts: present · What happens: not bind · To what, where: past, chain
This is a sentence of «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, Opening. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (present), 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 | The | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 2 past | det |
| 2 | past | past | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 chain | nsubj |
| 3 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 5 chain | aux |
| 4 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 5 chain | advmod |
| 5 | chain | chain | NOUN | Number=Sing | root | root |
| 6 | her | she | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 5 chain | nmod:unmarked |
| 7 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 12 bind | punct |
| 8 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 9 present | det |
| 9 | present | present | NOUN | Number=Sing | 12 bind | nsubj |
| 10 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 12 bind | aux |
| 11 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 12 bind | advmod |
| 12 | bind | bind | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 5 chain | parataxis |
| 13 | her | she | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 12 bind | obj |
| 14 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 5 chain | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | not bind | could | the present | past | vn shake-22.3-2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent she=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: «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, Project Gutenberg book 75089 (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/pg75089/1/30/