Fifty Famous Stories Retold, The Endless Tale., sentence 12
If any man shall try to tell such a story and then fail, he shall have his head cut off."
Who acts: man, head · What happens: try, tell, fail, have, cut off · To what, where: story · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, The Endless Tale.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (man, head), 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 | If | if | SCONJ | _ | 5 try | mark |
| 2 | any | any | DET | PronType=Ind | 3 man | det |
| 3 | man | man | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 try | nsubj |
| 4 | shall | shall | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 5 try | aux |
| 5 | try | try | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 17 have | advcl |
| 6 | to | to | PART | _ | 7 tell | mark |
| 7 | tell | tell | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 5 try | xcomp |
| 8 | such | such | DET | PronType=Ind | 10 story | det:predet |
| 9 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 10 story | det |
| 10 | story | story | NOUN | Number=Sing | 7 tell | obj |
| 11 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 13 fail | cc |
| 12 | then | then | ADV | PronType=Dem | 13 fail | advmod |
| 13 | fail | fail | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 7 tell | conj |
| 14 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 5 try | punct |
| 15 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 17 have | nsubj |
| 16 | shall | shall | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 17 have | aux |
| 17 | have | have | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | root | root |
| 18 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 19 head | nmod:poss |
| 19 | head | head | NOUN | Number=Sing | 20 cut | nsubj |
| 20 | cut | cut | VERB | Mood=Ind Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 17 have | parataxis |
| 21 | off | off | ADP | _ | 20 cut | compound:prt |
| 22 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 17 have | punct |
| 23 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 17 have | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | try a condition, not said to happen | shall | any man | vn try-61.1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality | |||||
| 2 | tell speech: assert not said to happen | to-infinitive | any man not said here | such story | vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent story=Recipient | ||||
| 3 | fail | infinitive | any man not said here | then | vn succeed-74-3-1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent | ||||
| 4 | have | shall | man | vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 5 | cut off | past | man's head | vn stop-55.4-1 «NP.eventuality V»: agent=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/pg18442/45/12/