In Ghostly Japan, Story of a Tengu[1], sentence 171
Certainly this emotion was older than I by thousands of thousands of centuries,—the inherited sum of numberless terrors ancestral.
Who acts: emotion · What happens: be, inherit, sum · To what, where: numberless terrors
This is a sentence of «In Ghostly Japan» by Lafcadio Hearn, Story of a Tengu[1]. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (emotion), 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 | Certainly | certainly | ADV | _ | 5 older | advmod |
| 2 | this | this | DET | Number=Sing PronType=Dem | 3 emotion | det |
| 3 | emotion | emotion | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 older | nsubj |
| 4 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 5 older | cop |
| 5 | older | old | ADJ | Degree=Cmp | root | root |
| 6 | than | than | ADP | _ | 7 I | case |
| 7 | I | I | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 5 older | obl |
| 8 | by | by | ADP | _ | 9 thousands | case |
| 9 | thousands | thousand | NOUN | Number=Plur | 5 older | obl |
| 10 | of | of | ADP | _ | 11 thousands | case |
| 11 | thousands | thousand | NOUN | Number=Plur | 9 thousands | nmod |
| 12 | of | of | ADP | _ | 13 centuries | case |
| 13 | centuries | century | NOUN | Number=Plur | 11 thousands | nmod |
| 14 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 22 ancestral | punct |
| 15 | — | - | PUNCT | _ | 22 ancestral | punct |
| 16 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 18 sum | det |
| 17 | inherited | inherit | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 18 sum | amod |
| 18 | sum | sum | NOUN | Number=Sing | 22 ancestral | compound |
| 19 | of | of | ADP | _ | 21 terrors | case |
| 20 | numberless | numberless | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 21 terrors | amod |
| 21 | terrors | terror | NOUN | Number=Plur | 18 sum | nmod |
| 22 | ancestral | ancestral | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 older | obl |
| 23 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 5 older | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is | past | this emotion | than I; by thousands of thousands of centuries; sum ancestral obl; certainly, old property | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | inherit | participle | vn obtain-13.5.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent | ||||||
| 3 | sum | numberless terrors | nom sum «possession transitive»: of=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: «In Ghostly Japan» by Lafcadio Hearn, Project Gutenberg book 8128 (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/pg8128/27/171/