Gleanings from Chinese folklore, A Chinese Tea-house Story, sentence 97
He said to himself, “What can I do here?
Who acts: teacher · What happens: say, do · To what, where: teacher · Speech: someone speaks here
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 (teacher), 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 said | nsubj |
| 2 | said | say | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | to | to | ADP | _ | 4 himself | case |
| 4 | himself | himself | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs Reflex=Yes | 2 said | obl |
| 5 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 10 do | punct |
| 6 | “ | " | PUNCT | _ | 10 do | punct |
| 7 | What | what | PRON | PronType=Int | 10 do | obj |
| 8 | can | can | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 10 do | aux |
| 9 | I | I | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 10 do | nsubj |
| 10 | do | do | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 2 said | ccomp |
| 11 | here | here | ADV | PronType=Dem | 10 do | advmod |
| 12 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 2 said | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | say speech: ask | past | teacher | teacher | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V PP.recipient S-Quote»: agent=Agent to himself=Recipient clause=Topic | ||||
| 2 | do in a quote | can | teacher | here | What obj | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=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/pg75089/10/97/