More English Fairy Tales, LXXXVI. Wise Men of Gotham, sentence 14

Even such an inventive genius as the late Mr. Sothern had considerable difficulty in inventing a new "sell."

Who acts: late Sothern, considerable difficulty · What happens: have, invent, sell · To what, where: considerable difficulty, new

This is a sentence of «More English Fairy Tales» by Joseph Jacobs, LXXXVI. Wise Men of Gotham. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (late Sothern, considerable difficulty), 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	Even	even	ADV	_	5 genius	advmod
2	such	such	DET	PronType=Ind	5 genius	det:predet
3	an	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	5 genius	det
4	inventive	inventive	ADJ	Degree=Pos	5 genius	amod
5	genius	genius	NOUN	Number=Sing	root	root
6	as	as	SCONJ	_	11 had	mark
7	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	10 Sothern	det
8	late	late	ADJ	Degree=Pos	10 Sothern	amod
9	Mr.	Mr.	PROPN	Number=Sing	10 Sothern	nmod:desc
10	Sothern	Sothern	PROPN	Number=Sing	11 had	nsubj
11	had	have	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	5 genius	advcl
12	considerable	considerable	ADJ	Degree=Pos	13 difficulty	amod
13	difficulty	difficulty	NOUN	Number=Sing	11 had	obj
14	in	in	SCONJ	_	15 inventing	mark
15	inventing	invent	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	13 difficulty	acl
16	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	17 new	det
17	new	new	ADJ	Degree=Pos	15 inventing	obj
18	"	"	PUNCT	_	19 sell	punct
19	sell	sell	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	17 new	advcl
20	.	.	PUNCT	_	5 genius	punct
21	"	"	PUNCT	_	5 genius	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	roles by
1	have	past	the late Sothern Mr.	considerable difficulty	vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent difficulty=Patient
2	invent	gerund	considerable difficulty not said here	a new	vn create-26.4-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent new=Result
3	sell in a quote	infinitive	considerable difficulty not said here		vn give-13.1-1 «NP V PP.recipient»: agent=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: «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.

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