Gleanings from Chinese folklore, A Story of Old China, part 4, sentence 45
They were very bright, and year by year took high honours in the examinations.
Who acts: tears · What happens: be, take · To what, where: high honours, examinations
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 (tears), 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 | They | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 4 bright | nsubj |
| 2 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 4 bright | cop |
| 3 | very | very | ADV | _ | 4 bright | advmod |
| 4 | bright | bright | ADJ | Degree=Pos | root | root |
| 5 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 10 took | punct |
| 6 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 10 took | cc |
| 7 | year | year | NOUN | Number=Sing | 10 took | obl:unmarked |
| 8 | by | by | ADP | _ | 9 year | case |
| 9 | year | year | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 year | nmod |
| 10 | took | take | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 4 bright | conj |
| 11 | high | high | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 12 honours | amod |
| 12 | honours | honour | NOUN | Number=Plur | 10 took | obj |
| 13 | in | in | ADP | _ | 15 examinations | case |
| 14 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 15 examinations | det |
| 15 | examinations | examination | NOUN | Number=Plur | 10 took | obl |
| 16 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 4 bright | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is | past | tears = tear | bright property | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | take | past | tears = tear not said here | high honours | the examinations | year | vn fit-54.3 «NP V NP PP.location»: agent=Agent honour=Value in examination=Location |
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/pg75089/20/45/