Andersen's Fairy Tales, The Shoes of Fortune, part 2, sentence 107

They had a language too; but surely nobody can expect that the soul of the watchman should understand it.

Who acts: description, nobody, soul · What happens: have, expect, understand · To what, where: language

This is a sentence of «Andersen's Fairy Tales» by H. C. Andersen, The Shoes of Fortune, 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 (description, nobody, soul), 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	They	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 had	nsubj
2	had	have	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	4 language	det
4	language	language	NOUN	Number=Sing	2 had	obj
5	too	too	ADV	_	2 had	advmod
6	;	;	PUNCT	_	11 expect	punct
7	but	but	CCONJ	_	11 expect	cc
8	surely	surely	ADV	_	11 expect	advmod
9	nobody	nobody	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Neg	11 expect	nsubj
10	can	can	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	11 expect	aux
11	expect	expect	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	2 had	parataxis
12	that	that	SCONJ	_	19 understand	mark
13	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	14 soul	det
14	soul	soul	NOUN	Number=Sing	19 understand	nsubj
15	of	of	ADP	_	17 watchman	case
16	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	17 watchman	det
17	watchman	watchman	NOUN	Number=Sing	14 soul	nmod
18	should	should	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	19 understand	aux
19	understand	understand	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	11 expect	advcl
20	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	19 understand	obj
21	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 had	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	other	roles by
1	have	past	description	a language		vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent language=Patient
2	expect	can	nobody		surely property	vn conjecture-29.5-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent
3	understand	should	the soul of the watchman	language		vn comprehend-87.2-1-1-1 «NP V NP PP.attribute»: agent=Experiencer it=Stimulus

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/pg1597/6/107/