Gleanings from Chinese folklore, T’ang Sung’s Journey to Get the Buddhist Classics, sentence 153
When they reached the bank of the river the turtle was there waiting to carry them across.
Who acts: vanity, turtle · What happens: reach, wait, carry · To what, where: bank, vanity
This is a sentence of «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, T’ang Sung’s Journey to Get the Buddhist Classics. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (vanity, turtle), 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 | When | when | SCONJ | _ | 3 reached | mark |
| 2 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 3 reached | nsubj |
| 3 | reached | reach | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 5 bank | det |
| 5 | bank | bank | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 reached | obj |
| 6 | of | of | ADP | _ | 8 river | case |
| 7 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 8 river | det |
| 8 | river | river | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 bank | nmod |
| 9 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 10 turtle | det |
| 10 | turtle | turtle | NOUN | Number=Sing | 13 waiting | nsubj |
| 11 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 13 waiting | aux |
| 12 | there | there | ADV | PronType=Dem | 13 waiting | advmod |
| 13 | waiting | wait | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 3 reached | advcl |
| 14 | to | to | PART | _ | 15 carry | mark |
| 15 | carry | carry | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 13 waiting | xcomp |
| 16 | them | they | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 15 carry | obj |
| 17 | across | across | ADV | _ | 15 carry | advmod |
| 18 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 reached | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | reach | past | vanity | the bank of the river | vn body_motion-49.2-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Agent bank=Theme | ||||
| 2 | wait | past · progressive | the turtle | there | tree rules | ||||
| 3 | carry | to-infinitive | the turtle not said here | vanity | across property | vn carry-11.4 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent they=Theme |
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/pg75089/16/153/