Fifty Famous Stories Retold, Bruce and the Spider., sentence 9

It seemed to him that there was no use for him to try to do anything more.

Who acts: It, use · What happens: seem, be, try, do · To what, where: Bruce, anything

This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Bruce and the Spider.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (It, use), 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	2 seemed	nsubj
2	seemed	seem	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
3	to	to	ADP	_	4 him	case
4	him	he	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	2 seemed	obl
5	that	that	SCONJ	_	7 was	mark
6	there	there	PRON	PronType=Dem	7 was	expl
7	was	be	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	2 seemed	advcl
8	no	no	DET	PronType=Neg	9 use	det
9	use	use	NOUN	Number=Sing	7 was	nsubj
10	for	for	ADP	_	11 him	case
11	him	he	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	9 use	nmod
12	to	to	PART	_	13 try	mark
13	try	try	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	9 use	acl
14	to	to	PART	_	15 do	mark
15	do	do	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	13 try	xcomp
16	anything	anything	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Ind	15 do	obj
17	more	more	ADV	Degree=Cmp	15 do	advmod
18	.	.	PUNCT	_	2 seemed	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	roles by
1	seem	past	It		Bruce		vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Theme
2	be	past	no use for Bruce			there	vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme
3	try	to-infinitive	no use for Bruce not said here				vn try-61.1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality
4	do not said to happen	to-infinitive	no use for Bruce not said here	anything			vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent anything=Eventuality

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: «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, Project Gutenberg book 18442 (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/pg18442/12/9/