Gleanings from Chinese folklore, A Story of Old China, part 3, sentence 138
Whatever business they have they are to tell you.”
Who acts: business, neighbours · What happens: be, have, tell · To what, where: Whatever, business, you · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, A Story of Old China, part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (business, neighbours), 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 | Whatever | whatever | PRON | PronType=Int | 8 tell | advcl |
| 2 | business | business | NOUN | Number=Sing | 1 Whatever | nsubj |
| 3 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 4 have | nsubj |
| 4 | have | have | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 2 business | acl:relcl |
| 5 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 1 Whatever | nsubj |
| 6 | are | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 1 Whatever | cop |
| 7 | to | to | PART | _ | 8 tell | mark |
| 8 | tell | tell | VERB | Mood=Imp VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 9 | you | you | PRON | Case=Acc Person=2 PronType=Prs | 8 tell | iobj |
| 10 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 8 tell | punct |
| 11 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 8 tell | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is a | present | business | Whatever | neighbours = neighbour nsubj | tree rules | |||
| 2 | have | present | neighbours = neighbour | business not said here | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent business=Patient | ||||
| 3 | tell speech: assert | to-infinitive | you | vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent you=Recipient |
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/pg75089/19/138/