Negro myths from the Georgia coast, told in the vernacular, Opening, part 12, sentence 117
He knew how to annihilate an exposed and throbbing nerve with a ten-penny nail heated red-hot.
Who acts: Daddy · What happens: know, annihilate, expose, throb, heat · To what, where: an, nerve, penny nail
This is a sentence of «Negro myths from the Georgia coast, told in the vernacular» by Charles C., Jr. Jones, Opening, part 12. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Daddy), 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 | He | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 2 knew | nsubj |
| 2 | knew | know | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | how | how | ADV | PronType=Int | 5 annihilate | advmod |
| 4 | to | to | PART | _ | 5 annihilate | mark |
| 5 | annihilate | annihilate | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 2 knew | xcomp |
| 6 | an | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 7 exposed | nsubj:pass |
| 7 | exposed | expose | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 5 annihilate | xcomp |
| 8 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 9 throbbing | cc |
| 9 | throbbing | throb | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 7 exposed | conj |
| 10 | nerve | nerve | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 throbbing | obj |
| 11 | with | with | ADP | _ | 16 nail | case |
| 12 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 16 nail | det |
| 13 | ten | ten | NUM | NumForm=Word NumType=Card | 15 penny | nummod |
| 14 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 13 ten | punct |
| 15 | penny | penny | NOUN | Number=Sing | 16 nail | compound |
| 16 | nail | nail | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 throbbing | obl |
| 17 | heated | heat | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 16 nail | acl |
| 18 | red | red | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 20 hot | amod |
| 19 | - | - | PUNCT | _ | 18 red | punct |
| 20 | hot | hot | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 17 heated | xcomp |
| 21 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 knew | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | know | past | Daddy | vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V how S_INF»: agent=Experiencer clause=Stimulus | |||||
| 2 | annihilate | to-infinitive | Daddy not said here | tree rules | |||||
| 3 | expose | participle · passive | an | vn indicate-78 «NP V NP»: subject=Topic | |||||
| 4 | throb | gerund | nerve | with a penny nail | vn modes_of_being_with_motion-47.3 «PP.location V NP»: agent=Location nerve=Theme | ||||
| 5 | heat | participle | a penny nail not said here | hot property | vn cooking-45.3 «NP.patient V»: agent=Patient |
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: «Negro myths from the Georgia coast, told in the vernacular» by Charles C., Jr. Jones, Project Gutenberg book 76586 (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/pg76586/12/117/