Reading a story: characters, plot and setting, sentence 10

In Aesop's old fable, a fox can't reach some grapes and walks off saying, «They're sour anyway.» It teaches that people sometimes pretend they never wanted what they couldn't get.

Who acts: fox, grapes, people · What happens: not reach, walk off, say, be, teach, pretend · To what, where: grapes, old fable · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of the lesson «Reading a story: characters, plot and setting» of the english 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 (fox, grapes, people), 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	In	in	ADP	_	5 fable	case
2	Aesop	Aesop	PROPN	Number=Sing	5 fable	nmod:poss
3	's	's	PART	_	2 Aesop	case
4	old	old	ADJ	Degree=Pos	5 fable	amod
5	fable	fable	NOUN	Number=Sing	11 reach	obl
6	,	,	PUNCT	_	5 fable	punct
7	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	8 fox	det
8	fox	fox	NOUN	Number=Sing	11 reach	nsubj
9	ca	can	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	11 reach	aux
10	n't	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	11 reach	advmod
11	reach	reach	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	root	root
12	some	some	DET	PronType=Ind	13 grapes	det
13	grapes	grape	NOUN	Number=Plur	11 reach	obj
14	and	and	CCONJ	_	15 walks	cc
15	walks	walk	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	11 reach	conj
16	off	off	ADP	_	15 walks	compound:prt
17	saying	say	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	15 walks	advcl
18	,	,	PUNCT	_	22 sour	punct
19	«	«	PUNCT	_	22 sour	punct
20	They	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	22 sour	nsubj
21	're	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	22 sour	cop
22	sour	sour	ADJ	Degree=Pos	17 saying	ccomp
23	anyway	anyway	ADV	_	22 sour	advmod
24	.	.	PUNCT	_	11 reach	punct
25	»	»	PUNCT	_	11 reach	punct
26	It	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	27 teaches	nsubj
27	teaches	teach	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	11 reach	parataxis
28	that	that	SCONJ	_	31 pretend	mark
29	people	people	NOUN	Number=Plur	31 pretend	nsubj
30	sometimes	sometimes	ADV	PronType=Ind	31 pretend	advmod
31	pretend	pretend	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	27 teaches	ccomp
32	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	34 wanted	nsubj
33	never	never	ADV	PronType=Neg	34 wanted	advmod
34	wanted	want	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	31 pretend	ccomp
35	what	what	PRON	PronType=Int	39 get	obj
36	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	39 get	nsubj
37	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	39 get	aux
38	n't	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	39 get	advmod
39	get	get	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	34 wanted	ccomp
40	.	.	PUNCT	_	11 reach	punct

Pragmatics

form: statement
act: assert
voice: narrator
polarity: none
teacher: kept the draft

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	not reach	can	a fox	some grapes	Aesop's old fable		vn body_motion-49.2-1-1 «NP V NP ADV»: agent=Agent grape=Theme
2	walk off	present	a fox not said here				vn resign-10.11-2 «NP V»: agent=Agent
3	say speech: assert	gerund	a fox not said here				vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent
4	is in a quote	present	grapes = grape			anyway, sour property	tree rules
5	teach speech: other	present	fox				vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V how S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
6	pretend	present	people			sometimes property	tree rules
7	not want	past	people				vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S_INF»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme
8	not get	could	people				vn comprehend-87.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer what=Stimulus

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:english:022-reading-a-story-characters-plot-and-setting.lesson:10.

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): R7-rel-agree ×2. 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/english/22-reading-a-story-characters-plot-and-setting/10/