Gleanings from Chinese folklore, A Chinese Tea-house Story, sentence 103
At his side was a cow’s tail, used to brush away flies.
What happens: be, use, brush away · To what, where: tail, side, flies
This is a sentence of «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, A Chinese Tea-house Story. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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 side | case |
| 2 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 3 side | nmod:poss |
| 3 | side | side | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 tail | obl |
| 4 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 8 tail | cop |
| 5 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 8 tail | det |
| 6 | cow | cow | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 tail | nmod:poss |
| 7 | ’s | 's | PART | _ | 6 cow | case |
| 8 | tail | tail | NOUN | Number=Sing | root | root |
| 9 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 10 used | punct |
| 10 | used | use | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 8 tail | acl |
| 11 | to | to | PART | _ | 12 brush | mark |
| 12 | brush | brush | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 10 used | xcomp |
| 13 | away | away | ADP | _ | 12 brush | compound:prt |
| 14 | flies | fly | NOUN | Number=Plur | 12 brush | obj |
| 15 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 8 tail | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is a | past | cow's tail | teacher's side | cow nmod:poss | tree rules | |||
| 2 | use | participle | cow's tail not said here | vn use-105.1 «NP V NP S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality | |||||
| 3 | brush away | to-infinitive | flies | vn spray-9.7-1 «NP V NP.destination»: agent=Agent fly=Destination |
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/pg75089/10/103/