Gleanings from Chinese folklore, T’ang Sung’s Journey to Get the Buddhist Classics, sentence 69
Sun Hou promised, and as they would need help in crossing on their return he was to look out for them.
Who acts: Sun, lives · What happens: promise, need, cross, be, return · To what, where: help, return · Speech: someone speaks here
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 (Sun, lives), 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 | Sun | Sun | PROPN | Number=Sing | 3 promised | nsubj |
| 2 | Hou | Hou | PROPN | Number=Sing | 1 Sun | flat |
| 3 | promised | promise | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 9 need | punct |
| 5 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 9 need | cc |
| 6 | as | as | SCONJ | _ | 9 need | mark |
| 7 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 9 need | nsubj |
| 8 | would | would | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 9 need | aux |
| 9 | need | need | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 3 promised | ccomp |
| 10 | help | help | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 need | obj |
| 11 | in | in | SCONJ | _ | 12 crossing | mark |
| 12 | crossing | cross | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 9 need | advcl |
| 13 | on | on | ADP | _ | 15 return | case |
| 14 | their | their | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 15 return | nmod:poss |
| 15 | return | return | NOUN | Number=Sing | 12 crossing | obl |
| 16 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 19 look | nsubj |
| 17 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 19 look | cop |
| 18 | to | to | PART | _ | 19 look | mark |
| 19 | look | look | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 15 return | acl:relcl |
| 20 | out | out | ADP | _ | 19 look | compound:prt |
| 21 | for | for | ADP | _ | 22 them | case |
| 22 | them | they | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 19 look | obl |
| 23 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 promised | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | promise speech: promise | past | Sun | vn promise-37.13 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | |||||
| 2 | need | would | lives = life | help | vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Pivot help=Theme | ||||
| 3 | cross | gerund | lives = life not said here | lives's return | vn contiguous_location-47.8-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | ||||
| 4 | is | past | Sun | for lives = life; look property | tree rules | ||||
| 5 | return | lives = life | nom return «communication intransitive»: 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/pg75089/16/69/