Gleanings from Chinese folklore, A Chinese Tea-house Story, sentence 41
He has but to nod and officials lose their heads.”
Who acts: Sung, officials · What happens: have, nod, lose · To what, where: heads
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 (Sung, officials), 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 | He | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 2 has | nsubj |
| 2 | has | have | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 5 nod | cc |
| 4 | to | to | PART | _ | 5 nod | mark |
| 5 | nod | nod | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 2 has | conj |
| 6 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 8 lose | cc |
| 7 | officials | official | NOUN | Number=Plur | 8 lose | nsubj |
| 8 | lose | lose | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 2 has | conj |
| 9 | their | their | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 10 heads | nmod:poss |
| 10 | heads | head | NOUN | Number=Plur | 8 lose | obj |
| 11 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 has | punct |
| 12 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 2 has | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | have | present | Sung | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 2 | nod | to-infinitive | Sung not said here | vn wink-40.3.1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 3 | lose | present | officials | officials's heads | vn succeed-74-3-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent head=Eventuality |
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/pg75089/10/41/