The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 1, sentence 22

There were no novels then, nor any printed books, of course; but there were people whose profession it was to amuse men and women by telling tales.

Who acts: novels, people, profession · What happens: be, print, tell · To what, where: tales · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 1. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (novels, people, profession), 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	There	there	PRON	PronType=Dem	2 were	expl
2	were	be	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	no	no	DET	PronType=Neg	4 novels	det
4	novels	novel	NOUN	Number=Plur	2 were	nsubj
5	then	then	ADV	PronType=Dem	2 were	advmod
6	,	,	PUNCT	_	10 books	punct
7	nor	nor	CCONJ	Polarity=Neg	10 books	cc
8	any	any	DET	PronType=Ind	10 books	det
9	printed	print	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	10 books	amod
10	books	book	NOUN	Number=Plur	2 were	nsubj
11	,	,	PUNCT	_	12 of	punct
12	of	of	ADP	ExtPos=ADV	10 books	advmod
13	course	course	NOUN	Number=Sing	12 of	fixed
14	;	;	PUNCT	_	17 were	punct
15	but	but	CCONJ	_	17 were	cc
16	there	there	PRON	PronType=Dem	17 were	expl
17	were	be	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	2 were	conj
18	people	people	NOUN	Number=Plur	17 were	nsubj
19	whose	whose	PRON	Poss=Yes PronType=Rel	20 profession	nmod:poss
20	profession	profession	NOUN	Number=Sing	18 people	nmod
21	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	24 amuse	nsubj
22	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	24 amuse	cop
23	to	to	PART	_	24 amuse	mark
24	amuse	amuse	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	20 profession	acl:relcl
25	men	man	NOUN	Number=Plur	24 amuse	obj
26	and	and	CCONJ	_	27 women	cc
27	women	woman	NOUN	Number=Plur	25 men	conj
28	by	by	SCONJ	_	29 telling	mark
29	telling	tell	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	24 amuse	advcl
30	tales	tale	NOUN	Number=Plur	29 telling	obj
31	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 were	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	be	past	no novels		there	then		vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
2	print	participle						vn scribble-25.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent
3	be	past	people people people's profession's profession		there			vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
4	is	past	profession				amuse property	tree rules
5	tell speech: assert	gerund	profession not said here	tales				vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent tale=Recipient

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 Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 128 (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/pg128/1/22/