Gleanings from Chinese folklore, T’ang Sung’s Journey to Get the Buddhist Classics, sentence 85
Sun Hou replied, “I can cut my head off and grow it on again ten times.”
Who acts: Sun · What happens: reply, cut off, grow on · To what, where: head · 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), 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 replied | nsubj |
| 2 | Hou | Hou | PROPN | Number=Sing | 1 Sun | flat |
| 3 | replied | reply | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 8 cut | punct |
| 5 | “ | " | PUNCT | _ | 8 cut | punct |
| 6 | I | I | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 8 cut | nsubj |
| 7 | can | can | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 8 cut | aux |
| 8 | cut | cut | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 3 replied | parataxis |
| 9 | my | my | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Sing Person=1 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 10 head | nmod:poss |
| 10 | head | head | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 cut | obj |
| 11 | off | off | ADP | _ | 8 cut | compound:prt |
| 12 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 13 grow | cc |
| 13 | grow | grow | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 8 cut | conj |
| 14 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 13 grow | obj |
| 15 | on | on | ADP | _ | 13 grow | compound:prt |
| 16 | again | again | ADV | _ | 13 grow | advmod |
| 17 | ten | ten | NUM | NumForm=Word NumType=Card | 18 times | nummod |
| 18 | times | time | NOUN | Number=Plur | 13 grow | obl:unmarked |
| 19 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 replied | punct |
| 20 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 3 replied | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | reply speech: assert | past | Sun | vn say-37.7-1 «NP V S-Quote»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | |||||
| 2 | cut off in a quote | can | Sun | my head | vn stop-55.4-1 «NP V NP.eventuality»: agent=Affector head=Eventuality | ||||
| 3 | grow on in a quote | infinitive | Sun not said here | head | again; time | vn appear-48.1.1 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location it=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/pg75089/16/85/