Gleanings from Chinese folklore, A Story of Old China, part 4, sentence 101
The latter took it up and read it: the sad story of the three generations.
Who acts: latter · What happens: take up, read · To what, where: bow
This is a sentence of «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, A Story of Old China, part 4. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (latter), 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 | The | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 2 latter | det |
| 2 | latter | latter | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 3 took | nsubj |
| 3 | took | take | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 3 took | obj |
| 5 | up | up | ADP | _ | 3 took | compound:prt |
| 6 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 7 read | cc |
| 7 | read | read | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 3 took | conj |
| 8 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 7 read | obj |
| 9 | : | : | PUNCT | _ | 12 story | punct |
| 10 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 12 story | det |
| 11 | sad | sad | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 12 story | amod |
| 12 | story | story | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 took | parataxis |
| 13 | of | of | ADP | _ | 16 generations | case |
| 14 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 16 generations | det |
| 15 | three | three | NUM | NumForm=Word NumType=Card | 16 generations | nummod |
| 16 | generations | generation | NOUN | Number=Plur | 12 story | nmod |
| 17 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 took | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | take up | past | the latter | bow | the sad story of the three generations parataxis | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme | |||
| 2 | read | infinitive | the latter not said here | bow | vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Topic |
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/pg75089/20/101/