More English Fairy Tales, More English Fairy Tales, part 20, sentence 38
Some stories start off without any preliminary formula, or with a simple "Well, there was once a ----".
Who acts: stories · What happens: start off, be · To what, where: simple ---- · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, part 20. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (stories), 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 | Some | some | DET | PronType=Ind | 2 stories | det |
| 2 | stories | story | NOUN | Number=Plur | 3 start | nsubj |
| 3 | start | start | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | off | off | ADP | _ | 3 start | compound:prt |
| 5 | without | without | ADP | _ | 8 formula | case |
| 6 | any | any | DET | PronType=Ind | 8 formula | det |
| 7 | preliminary | preliminary | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 formula | compound |
| 8 | formula | formula | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 start | obl |
| 9 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 13 simple | punct |
| 10 | or | or | CCONJ | _ | 13 simple | cc |
| 11 | with | with | ADP | _ | 13 simple | case |
| 12 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 13 simple | det |
| 13 | simple | simple | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 21 ---- | amod |
| 14 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 18 was | punct |
| 15 | Well | well | INTJ | _ | 18 was | discourse |
| 16 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 15 Well | punct |
| 17 | there | there | PRON | PronType=Dem | 18 was | expl |
| 18 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 21 ---- | cop |
| 19 | once | once | ADV | NumForm=Word NumType=Mult | 21 ---- | advmod |
| 20 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 21 ---- | det |
| 21 | ---- | ---- | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 start | parataxis |
| 22 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 21 ---- | punct |
| 23 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 start | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | start off | present | some stories | without any preliminary formula | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S_ING»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality | ||||
| 2 | is a in a quote | past | a simple ---- | once 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: «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/pg14241/34/38/