often means “Please tell me what time it is,” or if the speaker has been waiting
for a long time, it might mean “You are very late.”
To unravel the meaning of a statement in a natural language therefore
requires several levels of analysis. The first of these is syntactic analysis,
whose major component is parsing. It is here that the subject of the sentence
Mary gave John a birthday card.
is recognized as Mary while the subject of
John got a birthday card from Mary.