---
title: His father had disowned him; had struck him. — Gleanings from Chinese folklore · tree and pragmatics
description: His father had disowned him; had struck him. Who acts: father. A sentence of «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, A Story of Old China, part 2, with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg75089/18/128/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Gleanings from Chinese folklore](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg75089/) / [A Story of Old China, part 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg75089/18/) / 128

# Gleanings from Chinese folklore, A Story of Old China, part 2, sentence 128

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
His father had disowned him; had struck him.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** father · **What happens:** disown, strike · **To what, where:** boy

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of «Gleanings from Chinese folklore» by Nellie Naomi Russell, A Story of Old China, 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 (father), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

<!-- .note-en -->
**Mova's own parse.** This tree may be wrong.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = book:pg75089:18:128
# text = His father had disowned him; had struck him.
1	His	his	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	2	nmod:poss	_	_
2	father	father	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	4	nsubj	_	_
3	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	4	aux	_	_
4	disowned	disown	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	0	root	_	_
5	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	4	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
6	;	;	PUNCT	,	_	8	punct	_	_
7	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	struck	strike	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	4	conj	_	_
9	him	he	PRON	PRP	Case=Acc|Gender=Masc|Number=Sing|Person=3|PronType=Prs	8	obj	_	SpaceAfter=No
10	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	4	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **disown** | past · perfect | boy's father | boy |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **strike** | past · perfect | boy's father *not said here* | boy |  |  |  |  | vn hit-18.1-1 «NP V NP PP»: agent=Agent he=Instrument |

<!-- .note -->
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.

<!-- div src -->

**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.

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [sentence 127](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg75089/18/127/)
- next →: [A Story of Old China, part 3, 1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg75089/19/1/)
- ↑ back to [A Story of Old China, part 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg75089/18/)