In Ghostly Japan, Story of a Tengu[1], sentence 38
Should you make even the least sign of reverence, something very unfortunate might happen to me.”
Who acts: you, least sign · What happens: make, happen, sign · To what, where: me, reverence
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 (you, least sign), 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 | Should | should | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 3 make | aux |
| 2 | you | you | PRON | Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs | 3 make | nsubj |
| 3 | make | make | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | root | root |
| 4 | even | even | ADV | _ | 7 sign | advmod |
| 5 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 7 sign | det |
| 6 | least | least | ADJ | Degree=Sup | 7 sign | amod |
| 7 | sign | sign | NOUN | Number=Sing | 15 happen | nsubj |
| 8 | of | of | ADP | _ | 9 reverence | case |
| 9 | reverence | reverence | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 sign | nmod |
| 10 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 11 something | punct |
| 11 | something | something | PRON | Number=Sing PronType=Ind | 15 happen | nsubj |
| 12 | very | very | ADV | _ | 13 unfortunate | advmod |
| 13 | unfortunate | unfortunate | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 11 something | amod |
| 14 | might | might | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 15 happen | aux |
| 15 | happen | happen | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 3 make | ccomp |
| 16 | to | to | ADP | _ | 17 me | case |
| 17 | me | I | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 15 happen | obl |
| 18 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 make | punct |
| 19 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 3 make | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | make | should | you | tree rules | |||||
| 2 | happen | might | the least sign of reverence | me | something nsubj | vn occur-48.3-1 «NP V»: agent=Theme | |||
| 3 | sign | reverence | nom sign «communication 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/pg8128/27/38/