Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Shadow, sentence 221

So she began, by degrees, to question him about the most difficult things she could think of, and which she herself could not have answered; so that the shadow made a strange face.

Who acts: princess, shadow · What happens: begin, question, think, not answer, make · To what, where: man, difficult things, princess, strange face

This is a sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Shadow. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (princess, shadow), 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	So	so	ADV	_	3 began	advmod
2	she	she	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	3 began	nsubj
3	began	begin	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	,	,	PUNCT	_	6 degrees	punct
5	by	by	ADP	_	6 degrees	case
6	degrees	degree	NOUN	Number=Plur	3 began	obl
7	,	,	PUNCT	_	9 question	punct
8	to	to	PART	_	9 question	mark
9	question	question	VERB	Mood=Imp VerbForm=Fin	3 began	parataxis
10	him	he	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	9 question	obj
11	about	about	ADP	_	15 things	case
12	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	15 things	det
13	most	most	ADV	Degree=Sup	14 difficult	advmod
14	difficult	difficult	ADJ	Degree=Pos	15 things	amod
15	things	thing	NOUN	Number=Plur	9 question	obl
16	she	she	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	18 think	nsubj
17	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	18 think	aux
18	think	think	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	15 things	acl:relcl
19	of	of	ADP	_	18 think	obl
20	,	,	PUNCT	_	28 answered	punct
21	and	and	CCONJ	_	28 answered	cc
22	which	which	PRON	PronType=Rel	28 answered	obj
23	she	she	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	28 answered	nsubj:pass
24	herself	herself	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Fem Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs Reflex=Yes	23 she	conj
25	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	28 answered	aux
26	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	28 answered	advmod
27	have	have	AUX	VerbForm=Inf	28 answered	aux
28	answered	answer	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	3 began	parataxis
29	;	;	PUNCT	_	34 made	punct
30	so	so	SCONJ	ExtPos=SCONJ	34 made	mark
31	that	that	SCONJ	_	30 so	fixed
32	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	33 shadow	det
33	shadow	shadow	NOUN	Number=Sing	34 made	nsubj
34	made	make	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	3 began	conj
35	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	37 face	det
36	strange	strange	ADJ	Degree=Pos	37 face	amod
37	face	face	NOUN	Number=Sing	34 made	obj
38	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 began	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	other	roles by
1	begin	past	princess			by degrees	vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=Eventuality
2	question speech: other	to-infinitive			man	about the difficult things	vn interrogate-37.1.3 «NP V NP PP.topic»: agent=Agent he=Recipient about thing=Topic
3	think speech: other	could	princess	the difficult things not said here			vn wish-62 «NP V NP»: agent=Pivot thing=Theme
4	not answer speech: assert	could · perfect · passive		princess			vn reciprocate-112-1 «NP V NP PP»: subject=Theme which=Eventuality
5	make	past	the shadow	a strange face			vn build-26.1-1 «NP.asset V NP»: agent=Asset face=Product

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/pg1597/23/221/