The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Opening, part 2, sentence 16
The merchant, protesting his innocence, bewailed his wife and children, and tried pitifully to avert his fate.
Who acts: merchant · What happens: protest, bewail, try, avert, fate · To what, where: innocence, wife, fate
This is a sentence of «The Arabian Nights Entertainments» by Andrew Lang, Opening, part 2. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (merchant), 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 | The | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 2 merchant | det |
| 2 | merchant | merchant | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 bewailed | nsubj |
| 3 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 4 protesting | punct |
| 4 | protesting | protest | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 2 merchant | acl |
| 5 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 6 innocence | nmod:poss |
| 6 | innocence | innocence | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 protesting | obj |
| 7 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 2 merchant | punct |
| 8 | bewailed | bewail | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 9 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 10 wife | nmod:poss |
| 10 | wife | wife | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 bewailed | obj |
| 11 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 12 children | cc |
| 12 | children | child | NOUN | Number=Plur | 10 wife | conj |
| 13 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 15 tried | punct |
| 14 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 15 tried | cc |
| 15 | tried | try | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 8 bewailed | conj |
| 16 | pitifully | pitifully | ADV | _ | 15 tried | advmod |
| 17 | to | to | PART | _ | 18 avert | mark |
| 18 | avert | avert | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 15 tried | xcomp |
| 19 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 20 fate | nmod:poss |
| 20 | fate | fate | NOUN | Number=Sing | 18 avert | obj |
| 21 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 8 bewailed | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | protest speech: disagree | gerund | the merchant not said here | merchant's innocence | vn rebel-71.2-2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent innocence=Topic | ||||
| 2 | bewail | past | the merchant | merchant's wife and children | vn admire-31.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer wife=Stimulus | ||||
| 3 | try | past | the merchant not said here | pitifully property | vn try-61.1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality | ||||
| 4 | avert not said to happen | to-infinitive | the merchant not said here | merchant's fate | tree rules | ||||
| 5 | fate | merchant | nom fate «event transitive»: poss=agent |
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/pg128/2/16/