More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 5, sentence 35

"What's that to you?" said the tinker; "fools must needs be meddling."

Who acts: fools · What happens: be, say, need, meddle · To what, where: that, tinker, fools · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 5. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (fools), 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	"	"	PUNCT	_	2 What	punct
2	What	what	PRON	PronType=Int	9 said	nsubj:outer
3	's	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	4 that	cop
4	that	that	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Dem	2 What	nsubj
5	to	to	ADP	_	6 you	case
6	you	you	PRON	Case=Acc Person=2 PronType=Prs	2 What	obl
7	?	?	PUNCT	_	2 What	punct
8	"	"	PUNCT	_	2 What	punct
9	said	say	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
10	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	11 tinker	det
11	tinker	tinker	NOUN	Number=Sing	9 said	obj
12	;	;	PUNCT	_	16 needs	punct
13	"	"	PUNCT	_	14 fools	punct
14	fools	fool	NOUN	Number=Plur	16 needs	obl
15	must	must	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	16 needs	aux
16	needs	need	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	9 said	ccomp
17	be	be	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	18 meddling	aux
18	meddling	meddle	VERB	Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part	16 needs	xcomp
19	.	.	PUNCT	_	16 needs	punct
20	"	"	PUNCT	_	16 needs	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	roles by
1	is a in a quote	present		that	tree rules
2	say speech: ask	past		the tinker	tree rules
3	need in a quote	must		fools	vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V S_ING»: agent=Pivot clause=Theme
4	meddle not said to happen, in a quote	infinitive · progressive	fools not said here		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: «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, Project Gutenberg book 14241 (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/pg14241/19/35/