In Ghostly Japan, Names of Incense Used., part 3, sentence 6
“It would serve to explain some popular ideas of the supernatural which Western people know very little about.
Who acts: part, Western people · What happens: serve, explain, know · To what, where: popular ideas
This is a sentence of «In Ghostly Japan» by Lafcadio Hearn, Names of Incense Used., part 3. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (part, Western people), 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 | “ | " | PUNCT | _ | 4 serve | punct |
| 2 | It | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 4 serve | nsubj |
| 3 | would | would | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 4 serve | aux |
| 4 | serve | serve | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | root | root |
| 5 | to | to | PART | _ | 6 explain | mark |
| 6 | explain | explain | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 4 serve | xcomp |
| 7 | some | some | DET | PronType=Ind | 9 ideas | det |
| 8 | popular | popular | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 9 ideas | amod |
| 9 | ideas | idea | NOUN | Number=Plur | 6 explain | obj |
| 10 | of | of | ADP | _ | 12 supernatural | case |
| 11 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 12 supernatural | det |
| 12 | supernatural | supernatural | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 ideas | nmod |
| 13 | which | which | PRON | PronType=Rel | 16 know | obj |
| 14 | Western | western | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 15 people | amod |
| 15 | people | people | NOUN | Number=Plur | 16 know | nsubj |
| 16 | know | know | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 9 ideas | acl:relcl |
| 17 | very | very | ADV | _ | 18 little | advmod |
| 18 | little | little | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 16 know | obj |
| 19 | about | about | ADP | _ | 18 little | obl |
| 20 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 4 serve | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | serve in a quote | would | part | tree rules | |||||
| 2 | explain speech: assert in a quote | to-infinitive | part not said here | some popular ideas of the supernatural | vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent idea=Topic | ||||
| 3 | know in a quote | present | Western people | some popular ideas of the supernatural | tree rules |
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/pg8128/5/6/