Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Snow Queen, part 2, sentence 131

It is of no use asking the flowers; they only know their own old rhymes, and can tell me nothing.”

Who acts: gold, use, flowers · What happens: be, ask, know, tell, rhyme · To what, where: flowers, own old rhymes, nothing, me · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Snow Queen, 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 (gold, use, flowers), 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	It	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	5 use	nsubj
2	is	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	5 use	cop
3	of	of	ADP	_	5 use	case
4	no	no	DET	PronType=Neg	5 use	det
5	use	use	NOUN	Number=Sing	root	root
6	asking	ask	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	5 use	acl
7	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	8 flowers	det
8	flowers	flower	NOUN	Number=Plur	6 asking	obj
9	;	;	PUNCT	_	12 know	punct
10	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	12 know	nsubj
11	only	only	ADV	_	12 know	advmod
12	know	know	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin	5 use	parataxis
13	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	16 rhymes	nmod:poss
14	own	own	ADJ	Degree=Pos	16 rhymes	amod
15	old	old	ADJ	Degree=Pos	16 rhymes	amod
16	rhymes	rhyme	NOUN	Number=Plur	12 know	obj
17	,	,	PUNCT	_	20 tell	punct
18	and	and	CCONJ	_	20 tell	cc
19	can	can	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	20 tell	aux
20	tell	tell	VERB	Mood=Imp VerbForm=Fin	12 know	parataxis
21	me	I	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	20 tell	iobj
22	nothing	nothing	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Neg	20 tell	obj
23	.	.	PUNCT	_	5 use	punct
24	”	"	PUNCT	_	5 use	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	other	roles by
1	is	present	gold			of no use	tree rules
2	ask speech: ask	gerund	no use not said here	the flowers			vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent flower=Recipient
3	know	present	flowers = flower	flowers's own old rhymes			vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer rhyme=Stimulus
4	tell speech: assert	can		nothing	me		vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP-Dative NP»: agent=Agent i=Recipient nothing=Topic
5	rhyme		flowers = flower				nom rhyme «communication intransitive»: 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: «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, Project Gutenberg book 1597 (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/pg1597/12/131/