---
title: I must still delay to copy it to-night.” — Gleanings from Chinese folklore · tree and pragmatics
description: I must still delay to copy it to-night.” Who acts: I. A sentence of «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, A Chinese Tea-house Story, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# Gleanings from Chinese folklore, A Chinese Tea-house Story, sentence 25

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I must still delay to copy it to-night.”

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**Who acts:** I · **What happens:** delay, copy · **To what, where:** perusal

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This is a sentence of «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, A Chinese Tea-house Story. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (I), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

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**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg75089:10:25
# text = I must still delay to copy it to-night.”
1	I	I	PRON	PRP	Case=Nom|Number=Sing|Person=1|PronType=Prs	4	nsubj	_	_
2	must	must	AUX	MD	VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
3	still	still	ADV	RB	_	4	advmod	_	_
4	delay	delay	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	0	root	_	_
5	to	to	PART	TO	_	6	mark	_	_
6	copy	copy	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	4	xcomp	_	_
7	it	it	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Neut|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	6	obj	_	_
8	to	to	ADP	IN	_	10	case	_	SpaceAfter=No
9	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	8	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	night	night	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	6	obl	_	SpaceAfter=No
11	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	SpaceAfter=No
12	”	"	PUNCT	''	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **delay** | must | I |  |  |  | still |  | vn delay-53.3-1-1 «NP V S\_ING»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality |
| 2 | **copy** | to-infinitive | I *not said here* | perusal |  |  | night |  | vn scribble-25.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=Theme |

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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.

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**Text:** «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, Project Gutenberg book 75089 (public domain in the USA). **Tree:** Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. **Frames:** Mova's frames reader (`prag`), the chapter read in order.

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