Gleanings from Chinese folklore, A Chinese Hero, sentence 96
A swarm of ants scenting the honey crawled up to eat it, and thus outlined the characters very distinctly.
Who acts: ants, swarm · What happens: scent, crawl up, eat, outline · To what, where: honey, characters
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: who acts (ants, swarm), 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 | A | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 2 swarm | det |
| 2 | swarm | swarm | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 crawled | nsubj |
| 3 | of | of | ADP | _ | 4 ants | case |
| 4 | ants | ant | NOUN | Number=Plur | 2 swarm | nmod |
| 5 | scenting | scent | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 4 ants | acl |
| 6 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 7 honey | det |
| 7 | honey | honey | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 scenting | obj |
| 8 | crawled | crawl | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 9 | up | up | ADP | _ | 8 crawled | compound:prt |
| 10 | to | to | PART | _ | 11 eat | mark |
| 11 | eat | eat | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 8 crawled | xcomp |
| 12 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 11 eat | obj |
| 13 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 16 outlined | punct |
| 14 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 16 outlined | cc |
| 15 | thus | thus | ADV | _ | 16 outlined | advmod |
| 16 | outlined | outline | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 8 crawled | parataxis |
| 17 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 18 characters | det |
| 18 | characters | character | NOUN | Number=Plur | 16 outlined | obj |
| 19 | very | very | ADV | _ | 20 distinctly | advmod |
| 20 | distinctly | distinctly | ADV | _ | 16 outlined | advmod |
| 21 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 8 crawled | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | scent | gerund | ants not said here | the honey | vn butter-9.9 «NP V NP.destination»: agent=Agent honey=Destination | ||||
| 2 | crawl up | past | a swarm of ants | tree rules | |||||
| 3 | eat | to-infinitive | a swarm of ants not said here | honey | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Patient | ||||
| 4 | outline speech: other | past | the characters | distinctly, thus property | vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent character=Topic |
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/pg75089/9/96/