The Velveteen Rabbit, Opening, sentence 48

That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again.

Who acts: you · What happens: be, not be

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 (you), 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	2 was	nsubj
2	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	17 become	cop
3	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	6 years	det
4	great	great	ADJ	Degree=Pos	6 years	amod
5	many	many	ADJ	Degree=Pos	6 years	amod
6	years	year	NOUN	Number=Plur	7 ago	obl:unmarked
7	ago	ago	ADV	_	2 was	advmod
8	;	;	PUNCT	_	17 become	punct
9	but	but	CCONJ	_	17 become	cc
10	once	once	SCONJ	_	13 Real	mark
11	you	you	PRON	Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs	13 Real	nsubj
12	are	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=2 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	13 Real	cop
13	Real	real	ADJ	Degree=Pos	17 become	advcl
14	you	you	PRON	Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs	17 become	nsubj
15	ca	can	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	17 become	aux
16	n't	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	17 become	advmod
17	become	become	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	root	root
18	unreal	unreal	ADJ	Degree=Pos	17 become	xcomp
19	again	again	ADV	_	17 become	advmod
20	.	.	PUNCT	_	17 become	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	is	present	you					real property	tree rules
2	not is	can · past	you				again	become, unreal property	tree rules

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.

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