Gleanings from Chinese folklore, A Story of Old China, part 4, sentence 83
“How could so many people attack one man unless there was a good reason?
Who acts: many people, good reason · What happens: attack, be · To what, where: one man
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 (many people, good reason), 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 | _ | 7 attack | punct |
| 2 | How | how | ADV | PronType=Int | 5 many | advmod |
| 3 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 5 many | aux |
| 4 | so | so | ADV | _ | 5 many | advmod |
| 5 | many | many | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 6 people | amod |
| 6 | people | people | NOUN | Number=Plur | 7 attack | nsubj |
| 7 | attack | attack | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 8 | one | one | NUM | NumForm=Word NumType=Card | 9 man | nummod |
| 9 | man | man | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 attack | obj |
| 10 | unless | unless | SCONJ | _ | 12 was | mark |
| 11 | there | there | PRON | PronType=Dem | 12 was | expl |
| 12 | was | be | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 7 attack | advcl |
| 13 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 15 reason | det |
| 14 | good | good | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 15 reason | amod |
| 15 | reason | reason | NOUN | Number=Sing | 12 was | nsubj |
| 16 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 7 attack | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | attack in a quote | present | many people | one man | vn attack-60.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent man=Patient | ||||
| 2 | be a condition, not said to happen, in a quote | past | a good reason | there | vn exist-47.1 «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/pg75089/20/83/