Gleanings from Chinese folklore, A Chinese Tea-house Story, sentence 4
Again and again the literary men wrote on the subject, but only to fail of his approbation.
Who acts: literary men, Emperor · What happens: write, fail, approbate · To what, where: subject
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: who acts (literary men, Emperor), 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 | Again | again | ADV | _ | 7 wrote | advmod |
| 2 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 3 again | cc |
| 3 | again | again | ADV | _ | 1 Again | conj |
| 4 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 6 men | det |
| 5 | literary | literary | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 6 men | amod |
| 6 | men | man | NOUN | Number=Plur | 7 wrote | nsubj |
| 7 | wrote | write | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 8 | on | on | ADP | _ | 10 subject | case |
| 9 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 10 subject | det |
| 10 | subject | subject | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 wrote | obl |
| 11 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 15 fail | punct |
| 12 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 15 fail | cc |
| 13 | only | only | ADV | _ | 15 fail | advmod |
| 14 | to | to | PART | _ | 15 fail | mark |
| 15 | fail | fail | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 7 wrote | conj |
| 16 | of | of | ADP | _ | 18 approbation | case |
| 17 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 18 approbation | nmod:poss |
| 18 | approbation | approbation | NOUN | Number=Sing | 15 fail | obl |
| 19 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 7 wrote | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | write | past | the literary men | the subject | again; again | vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V NP PP.destination»: agent=Agent on subject=Destination | |||
| 2 | fail | to-infinitive | the literary men not said here | of Emperor's approbation | vn succeed-74-3-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | ||||
| 3 | approbate | Emperor | nom approbation «feeling transitive»: poss=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: «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/pg75089/10/4/