Gleanings from Chinese folklore, A Daughter of the Orient, sentence 12
His wife and children mourned and fasted, but “Alas! what can we do?” was their hopeless cry.
Who acts: we · What happens: mourn, fast, do, be · To what, where: children, hopeless cry, wife · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, A Daughter of the Orient. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (we), 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 | His | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 2 wife | nmod:poss |
| 2 | wife | wife | NOUN | Number=Sing | root | root |
| 3 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 4 children | cc |
| 4 | children | child | NOUN | Number=Plur | 2 wife | conj |
| 5 | mourned | mourn | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 4 children | acl |
| 6 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 7 fasted | cc |
| 7 | fasted | fast | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 5 mourned | conj |
| 8 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 22 cry | punct |
| 9 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 22 cry | cc |
| 10 | “ | " | PUNCT | _ | 16 do | punct |
| 11 | Alas | alas | INTJ | _ | 16 do | discourse |
| 12 | ! | ! | PUNCT | _ | 11 Alas | punct |
| 13 | what | what | PRON | PronType=Int | 16 do | obj |
| 14 | can | can | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 16 do | aux |
| 15 | we | we | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs | 16 do | nsubj |
| 16 | do | do | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 22 cry | csubj |
| 17 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 16 do | punct |
| 18 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 16 do | punct |
| 19 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 22 cry | cop |
| 20 | their | their | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 22 cry | nmod:poss |
| 21 | hopeless | hopeless | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 22 cry | amod |
| 22 | cry | cry | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 wife | conj |
| 23 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 wife | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | mourn | participle | children not said here | vn marvel-31.3 «NP V»: agent=Experiencer | |||||
| 2 | fast | participle | tree rules | ||||||
| 3 | do in a quote | can | we | children's hopeless cry | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Eventuality | ||||
| 4 | be speech: express | past | children's hopeless cry | children = child nmod:poss | tree rules |
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/pg75089/7/12/