Gleanings from Chinese folklore, A Story of Old China, part 1, sentence 4
He made and unmade officials and no appointment could be secured except through his influence.
Who acts: man · What happens: make, unmake, secure · To what, where: officials, appointment
This is a sentence of «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, A Story of Old China, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man), 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 made | nsubj |
| 2 | made | make | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 4 unmade | cc |
| 4 | unmade | unmake | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 2 made | conj |
| 5 | officials | official | NOUN | Number=Plur | 4 unmade | obj |
| 6 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 11 secured | cc |
| 7 | no | no | DET | PronType=Neg | 8 appointment | det |
| 8 | appointment | appointment | NOUN | Number=Sing | 11 secured | nsubj:pass |
| 9 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 11 secured | aux |
| 10 | be | be | AUX | VerbForm=Inf | 11 secured | aux:pass |
| 11 | secured | secure | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 2 made | conj |
| 12 | except | except | ADP | _ | 15 influence | case |
| 13 | through | through | ADP | _ | 15 influence | case |
| 14 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 15 influence | nmod:poss |
| 15 | influence | influence | NOUN | Number=Sing | 11 secured | obl |
| 16 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 made | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | make | past | man | vn build-26.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 2 | unmake | past | man not said here | officials | vn destroy-44 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent official=Patient | ||||
| 3 | secure | could · passive | no appointment | except man's influence | vn ensure-99 «NP V NP»: subject=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/pg75089/17/4/