Gleanings from Chinese folklore, A Chinese Hero, sentence 84
They were filled with terror, for never before had such a thing been seen or heard of.
What happens: fill, have, see, hear · To what, where: officers, thing
This is a sentence of «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, A Chinese Hero. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: 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 | 3 filled | nsubj |
| 2 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 3 filled | aux:pass |
| 3 | filled | fill | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | root | root |
| 4 | with | with | ADP | _ | 5 terror | case |
| 5 | terror | terror | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 filled | obl |
| 6 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 10 had | punct |
| 7 | for | for | SCONJ | _ | 10 had | mark |
| 8 | never | never | ADV | PronType=Neg | 9 before | advmod |
| 9 | before | before | ADV | _ | 10 had | advmod |
| 10 | had | have | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 3 filled | conj |
| 11 | such | such | DET | PronType=Ind | 13 thing | det:predet |
| 12 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 13 thing | det |
| 13 | thing | thing | NOUN | Number=Sing | 15 seen | nsubj:pass |
| 14 | been | be | AUX | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part | 15 seen | aux:pass |
| 15 | seen | see | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 10 had | ccomp |
| 16 | or | or | CCONJ | _ | 17 heard | cc |
| 17 | heard | hear | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 15 seen | conj |
| 18 | of | of | ADP | _ | 17 heard | obl |
| 19 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 filled | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | fill | past · passive | officers = officer | with terror | vn other_cos-45.4 «NP V NP PP.instrument»: subject=Patient with terror=Instrument | ||||
| 2 | have | past | never | before property | tree rules | ||||
| 3 | see | participle · passive | such thing | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1 «NP V NP»: subject=Stimulus | |||||
| 4 | hear | participle | vn see-30.1-1-1 «NP V PP.stimulus»: agent=Experiencer |
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/pg75089/9/84/