Gleanings from Chinese folklore, A Story of Old China, part 3, sentence 27
“How old is your mother?” asked the lady.
Who acts: old mother · What happens: be, ask · To what, where: old mother, lady · 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 (old mother), 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 | “ | " | PUNCT | _ | 6 mother | punct |
| 2 | How | how | ADV | PronType=Int | 3 old | advmod |
| 3 | old | old | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 6 mother | amod |
| 4 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 6 mother | cop |
| 5 | your | your | PRON | Case=Gen Person=2 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 6 mother | nmod:poss |
| 6 | mother | mother | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 asked | nsubj |
| 7 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 6 mother | punct |
| 8 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 6 mother | punct |
| 9 | asked | ask | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 10 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 11 lady | det |
| 11 | lady | lady | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 asked | iobj |
| 12 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 9 asked | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is a in a quote | present | your old mother | your nmod:poss | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | ask speech: ask | past | your old mother | the lady | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent lady=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/pg75089/19/27/