In Ghostly Japan, Names of Incense Used., part 2, sentence 38

At brief intervals some expert visits each tray to inspect progress, picks up the plumpest feeders, and decides, by gently rolling them between forefinger and thumb, which are ready to spin.

Who acts: some, thumb · What happens: expert, inspect, pick up, decide, roll, be · To what, where: visits, brief intervals, progress, plumpest feeders, trays, forefinger

This is a sentence of «In Ghostly Japan» by Lafcadio Hearn, Names of Incense Used., part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (some, thumb), 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	At	at	ADP	_	3 intervals	case
2	brief	brief	ADJ	Degree=Pos	3 intervals	amod
3	intervals	interval	NOUN	Number=Plur	5 expert	obl
4	some	some	DET	PronType=Ind	5 expert	nsubj
5	expert	expert	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	root	root
6	visits	visit	NOUN	Number=Plur	5 expert	obj
7	each	each	DET	PronType=Tot	8 tray	det
8	tray	tray	NOUN	Number=Sing	5 expert	obj
9	to	to	PART	_	10 inspect	mark
10	inspect	inspect	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	5 expert	advcl
11	progress	progress	NOUN	Number=Sing	10 inspect	obj
12	,	,	PUNCT	_	13 picks	punct
13	picks	pick	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	5 expert	parataxis
14	up	up	ADP	_	13 picks	compound:prt
15	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	17 feeders	det
16	plumpest	plump	ADJ	Degree=Sup	17 feeders	amod
17	feeders	feeder	NOUN	Number=Plur	13 picks	obj
18	,	,	PUNCT	_	20 decides	punct
19	and	and	CCONJ	_	20 decides	cc
20	decides	decide	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	13 picks	conj
21	,	,	PUNCT	_	24 rolling	punct
22	by	by	SCONJ	_	24 rolling	mark
23	gently	gently	ADV	_	24 rolling	advmod
24	rolling	roll	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	20 decides	advcl
25	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	24 rolling	obj
26	between	between	ADP	_	27 forefinger	case
27	forefinger	forefinger	NOUN	Number=Sing	24 rolling	obl
28	and	and	CCONJ	_	29 thumb	cc
29	thumb	thumb	NOUN	Number=Sing	27 forefinger	conj
30	,	,	PUNCT	_	33 ready	punct
31	which	which	PRON	PronType=Rel	33 ready	nsubj
32	are	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	33 ready	cop
33	ready	ready	ADJ	Degree=Pos	29 thumb	acl:relcl
34	to	to	PART	_	35 spin	mark
35	spin	spin	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	33 ready	xcomp
36	.	.	PUNCT	_	5 expert	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	expert	present	some	visits	brief intervals	each tray obj	tree rules
2	inspect	to-infinitive	some not said here	progress			vn assessment-34.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent progress=Theme
3	pick up	present		the plumpest feeders			vn discover-84-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent feeder=Topic
4	decide	present					vn correspond-36.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent
5	roll	gerund		trays = tray	forefinger and thumb	gently property	vn run-51.3.2-2 «NP V NP PP.trajectory»: agent=Agent they=Theme between forefinger=Trajectory
6	is	present	thumb			ready property	tree rules
7	spin	to-infinitive	thumb not said here				vn roll-51.3.1 «NP.theme V»: agent=Theme

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/pg8128/4/38/

🌲 In Ghostly Japan, Names of Incense Used., part 2, sentence 38

The tree

Pragmatics

In Ghostly Japan, Names of Incense Used., part 2, sentence 38