Gleanings from Chinese folklore, T’ang Sung’s Journey to Get the Buddhist Classics, sentence 73
They said these persons must first prove their strength before they could go on their way.
Who acts: ministers, persons · What happens: say, prove, go · To what, where: strength, way · 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 (ministers, persons), 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 | They | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 2 said | nsubj |
| 2 | said | say | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | these | this | DET | Number=Plur PronType=Dem | 4 persons | det |
| 4 | persons | person | NOUN | Number=Plur | 7 prove | nsubj |
| 5 | must | must | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 7 prove | aux |
| 6 | first | first | ADV | NumForm=Word NumType=Ord | 7 prove | advmod |
| 7 | prove | prove | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 2 said | ccomp |
| 8 | their | their | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 9 strength | nmod:poss |
| 9 | strength | strength | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 prove | obj |
| 10 | before | before | SCONJ | _ | 13 go | mark |
| 11 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 13 go | nsubj |
| 12 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 13 go | aux |
| 13 | go | go | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 7 prove | advcl |
| 14 | on | on | ADP | _ | 16 way | case |
| 15 | their | their | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 16 way | nmod:poss |
| 16 | way | way | NOUN | Number=Sing | 13 go | obl |
| 17 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 said | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | say speech: assert | past | ministers = minister | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | |||||
| 2 | prove | must | this persons | ministers's strength | first property | vn deduce-97.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent strength=Theme | |||
| 3 | go | could | ministers = minister | ministers's way | vn occur-48.3-2 «NP V PP»: agent=Theme on way=Location |
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/pg75089/16/73/