Just So Stories, How the First Letter Was Written, part 1: a broken spear and a picture on birch-bark, sentence 17
«Here's a pretty kettle of fish!» means here's a nice mess; «make the best of a bad job» means do what you can when things go wrong.
Who acts: pretty kettle, things · What happens: be, mean, make, do, go · To what, where: nice mess, best · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of the lesson «Just So Stories, How the First Letter Was Written, part 1: a broken spear and a picture on birch-bark» of the books course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (pretty kettle, things), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.
The tree
The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)
| # | word | lemma | UPOS | features | head | relation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | « | « | PUNCT | _ | 2 Here | punct |
| 2 | Here | here | ADV | PronType=Dem | root | root |
| 3 | 's | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 2 Here | cop |
| 4 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 6 kettle | det |
| 5 | pretty | pretty | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 6 kettle | amod |
| 6 | kettle | kettle | NOUN | Number=Sing | 2 Here | nsubj |
| 7 | of | of | ADP | _ | 8 fish | case |
| 8 | fish | fish | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 kettle | nmod |
| 9 | ! | ! | PUNCT | _ | 2 Here | punct |
| 10 | » | » | PUNCT | _ | 2 Here | punct |
| 11 | means | mean | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 2 Here | parataxis |
| 12 | here | here | ADV | PronType=Dem | 16 mess | advmod |
| 13 | 's | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 16 mess | cop |
| 14 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 16 mess | det |
| 15 | nice | nice | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 16 mess | amod |
| 16 | mess | mess | NOUN | Number=Sing | 11 means | ccomp |
| 17 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 19 make | punct |
| 18 | « | « | PUNCT | _ | 19 make | punct |
| 19 | make | make | VERB | Mood=Imp VerbForm=Fin | 2 Here | parataxis |
| 20 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 21 best | det |
| 21 | best | good | ADJ | Degree=Sup | 19 make | obj |
| 22 | of | of | ADP | _ | 25 job | case |
| 23 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 25 job | det |
| 24 | bad | bad | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 25 job | amod |
| 25 | job | job | NOUN | Number=Sing | 21 best | nmod |
| 26 | » | » | PUNCT | _ | 19 make | punct |
| 27 | means | mean | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 2 Here | parataxis |
| 28 | do | do | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 27 means | ccomp |
| 29 | what | what | PRON | PronType=Int | 28 do | obj |
| 30 | you | you | PRON | Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs | 31 can | nsubj |
| 31 | can | can | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 29 what | acl:relcl |
| 32 | when | when | SCONJ | _ | 34 go | mark |
| 33 | things | thing | NOUN | Number=Plur | 34 go | nsubj |
| 34 | go | go | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 28 do | advcl |
| 35 | wrong | wrong | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 34 go | xcomp |
| 36 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 Here | punct |
Pragmatics
No stored speech act for this sentence.
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is in a quote | present | a pretty kettle of fish | here property | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | mean | present | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent | ||||||
| 3 | is a | present | a nice mess | here | tree rules | ||||
| 4 | make in a quote | infinitive | the best of a bad job | vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset good=Product | |||||
| 5 | mean | present | vn intend-61.2-1 «NP V S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | ||||||
| 6 | do | infinitive | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent what=Eventuality | ||||||
| 7 | go | present | things | wrong property | vn disappearance-48.2-1 «NP 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.
Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, mova-school-agreed-en.conllu) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence school:books:084-justso-first-letter-1-a-broken-spear.lesson:17.
The tree: Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R8-pos-agree ×1. The frames are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (prag) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.
See the release 0.4.
This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/books/84-justso-first-letter-1-a-broken-spear/17/