Gleanings from Chinese folklore, Miss Nellie N. Russell’s Unique Work, sentence 50
There were always flowers, the flowers they loved, and tea served in the daintiest manner.
Who acts: flowers · What happens: be, love, serve · To what, where: flowers, tea
This is a sentence of «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, Miss Nellie N. Russell’s Unique Work. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (flowers), 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 | There | there | PRON | PronType=Dem | 2 were | expl |
| 2 | were | be | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | always | always | ADV | PronType=Tot | 2 were | advmod |
| 4 | flowers | flower | NOUN | Number=Plur | 2 were | nsubj |
| 5 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 7 flowers | punct |
| 6 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 7 flowers | det |
| 7 | flowers | flower | NOUN | Number=Plur | 4 flowers | conj |
| 8 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 9 loved | nsubj |
| 9 | loved | love | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 7 flowers | acl:relcl |
| 10 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 12 tea | punct |
| 11 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 12 tea | cc |
| 12 | tea | tea | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 were | parataxis |
| 13 | served | serve | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 12 tea | acl |
| 14 | in | in | ADP | _ | 17 manner | case |
| 15 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 17 manner | det |
| 16 | daintiest | dainty | ADJ | Degree=Sup | 17 manner | amod |
| 17 | manner | manner | NOUN | Number=Sing | 13 served | obl |
| 18 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 were | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | be | past | flowers and the flowers | there | tea parataxis; always property | vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | |||
| 2 | love | past | flowers = flower | the flowers not said here | vn admire-31.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer flower=Stimulus | ||||
| 3 | serve | participle | tea not said here | in the daintiest manner | vn masquerade-29.6-2 «NP V PP.attribute»: agent=Agent in manner=Attribute |
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/pg75089/4/50/