Fifty Famous Stories Retold, King Canute on the Seashore., sentence 17
The foolish officers were puzzled, but they did not dare to say "No."
Who acts: officers · What happens: puzzle, not dare, not say · To what, where: foolish officers, No. · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, King Canute on the Seashore.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (officers), 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 | The | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 3 officers | det |
| 2 | foolish | foolish | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 3 officers | amod |
| 3 | officers | officer | NOUN | Number=Plur | 5 puzzled | nsubj:pass |
| 4 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 5 puzzled | aux:pass |
| 5 | puzzled | puzzle | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | root | root |
| 6 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 11 dare | punct |
| 7 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 11 dare | cc |
| 8 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 11 dare | nsubj |
| 9 | did | do | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 11 dare | aux |
| 10 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 11 dare | advmod |
| 11 | dare | dare | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 5 puzzled | parataxis |
| 12 | to | to | PART | _ | 13 say | mark |
| 13 | say | say | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 11 dare | xcomp |
| 14 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 15 No. | punct |
| 15 | No. | no. | NOUN | Abbr=Yes Number=Sing | 13 say | obj |
| 16 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 15 No. | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | puzzle | past · passive | the foolish officers | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V NP»: subject=Experiencer | |||||
| 2 | not dare | past · do-support | officers = officer | vn urge-58.1-1 «NP V NP S_ING»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | |||||
| 3 | not say speech: assert | to-infinitive | officers = officer not said here | No. | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V NP.topic»: agent=Agent no.=Topic |
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/pg18442/5/17/