Gleanings from Chinese folklore, A Story of Old China, part 1, sentence 45
A few days later a servant of Nien Chi’s came with a letter and some very beautiful presents.
Who acts: servant · What happens: come
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 (servant), 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 | A | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 3 days | det |
| 2 | few | few | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 3 days | amod |
| 3 | days | day | NOUN | Number=Plur | 4 later | obl:unmarked |
| 4 | later | late | ADV | Degree=Cmp | 11 came | advmod |
| 5 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 6 servant | det |
| 6 | servant | servant | NOUN | Number=Sing | 11 came | nsubj |
| 7 | of | of | ADP | _ | 9 Chi | case |
| 8 | Nien | Nien | PROPN | Number=Sing | 9 Chi | compound |
| 9 | Chi | Chi | PROPN | Number=Sing | 6 servant | nmod |
| 10 | ’s | 's | PART | _ | 9 Chi | case |
| 11 | came | come | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 12 | with | with | ADP | _ | 14 letter | case |
| 13 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 14 letter | det |
| 14 | letter | letter | NOUN | Number=Sing | 11 came | obl |
| 15 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 19 presents | cc |
| 16 | some | some | DET | PronType=Ind | 19 presents | det |
| 17 | very | very | ADV | _ | 18 beautiful | advmod |
| 18 | beautiful | beautiful | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 19 presents | amod |
| 19 | presents | present | NOUN | Number=Plur | 14 letter | conj |
| 20 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 11 came | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | come | past | a servant of Nien Chi | with a letter and some beautiful presents; late property | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V»: agent=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/pg75089/17/45/