The Velveteen Rabbit, Opening, sentence 179

That was a fine place to make a bonfire, only the gardener was too busy just then to attend to it.

Who acts: That, gardener · What happens: be, make, attend · To what, where: fine place, bonfire, gardener

This is a sentence of «The Velveteen Rabbit» by Margery Williams Bianco, Opening. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (That, gardener), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

Parsed by Mova, not checked by a teacher. This tree is Mova's own parse (the en model, on the CPU, when the site is built); it may be wrong.

The tree

The words, one row each (CoNLL-U)

#	word	lemma	UPOS	features	head	relation
1	That	that	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	5 place	nsubj
2	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	5 place	cop
3	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	5 place	det
4	fine	fine	ADJ	Degree=Pos	5 place	amod
5	place	place	NOUN	Number=Sing	root	root
6	to	to	PART	_	7 make	mark
7	make	make	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	5 place	acl
8	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	9 bonfire	det
9	bonfire	bonfire	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 make	obj
10	,	,	PUNCT	_	16 busy	punct
11	only	only	ADV	_	16 busy	advmod
12	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	13 gardener	det
13	gardener	gardener	NOUN	Number=Sing	16 busy	nsubj
14	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	16 busy	cop
15	too	too	ADV	_	16 busy	advmod
16	busy	busy	ADJ	Degree=Pos	5 place	parataxis
17	just	just	ADV	_	18 then	advmod
18	then	then	ADV	PronType=Dem	16 busy	advmod
19	to	to	PART	_	20 attend	mark
20	attend	attend	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	16 busy	advcl
21	to	to	ADP	_	22 it	case
22	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	20 attend	obl
23	.	.	PUNCT	_	5 place	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	when	other	roles by
1	is a	past	That	a fine place				tree rules
2	make	to-infinitive		a bonfire				vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset bonfire=Product
3	is	past	the gardener			then	busy property	tree rules
4	attend	to-infinitive	the gardener not said here		gardener			vn caring-75.2-1-1 «NP V PP»: agent=Agent to it=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.

Text: «The Velveteen Rabbit» by Margery Williams Bianco, Project Gutenberg book 11757 (public domain in the USA). Tree: Mova's own parse, Elamur Cosmic License. Frames: Mova's frames reader (prag), the chapter read in order.

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg11757/1/179/