Fifty Famous Stories Retold, King Canute on the Seashore., sentence 2
King Canute was a Dane; but the Danes were not so fierce and cruel then as they had been when they were at war with King Alfred.
Who acts: King, Danes, they · What happens: be, not be · To what, where: Dane
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 (King, Danes, they), 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 | King | King | PROPN | Number=Sing | 5 Dane | nsubj |
| 2 | Canute | Canute | PROPN | Number=Sing | 1 King | flat |
| 3 | was | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 5 Dane | cop |
| 4 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 5 Dane | det |
| 5 | Dane | Dane | PROPN | Number=Sing | root | root |
| 6 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 13 fierce | punct |
| 7 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 13 fierce | cc |
| 8 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 9 Danes | det |
| 9 | Danes | Dane | PROPN | Number=Plur | 13 fierce | nsubj |
| 10 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 13 fierce | cop |
| 11 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 13 fierce | advmod |
| 12 | so | so | ADV | _ | 13 fierce | advmod |
| 13 | fierce | fierce | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 5 Dane | conj |
| 14 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 15 cruel | cc |
| 15 | cruel | cruel | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 13 fierce | conj |
| 16 | then | then | ADV | PronType=Dem | 25 war | advmod |
| 17 | as | as | ADP | _ | 25 war | case |
| 18 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 25 war | nsubj |
| 19 | had | have | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 25 war | aux |
| 20 | been | be | AUX | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part | 25 war | cop |
| 21 | when | when | ADV | PronType=Int | 25 war | advmod |
| 22 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 25 war | nsubj |
| 23 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 25 war | cop |
| 24 | at | at | ADP | _ | 25 war | case |
| 25 | war | war | NOUN | Number=Sing | 13 fierce | obl |
| 26 | with | with | ADP | _ | 28 Alfred | case |
| 27 | King | King | PROPN | Number=Sing | 28 Alfred | nmod:desc |
| 28 | Alfred | Alfred | PROPN | Number=Sing | 25 war | nmod |
| 29 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 5 Dane | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is a | past | King | a Dane | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | not is | past | the Danes | fierce property | tree rules | ||||
| 3 | be | the Danes not said here | tree rules | ||||||
| 4 | is | past · perfect | they | then | as war; with Alfred King | tree rules |
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/pg18442/5/2/