Fifty Famous Stories Retold, I. the Three Questions., sentence 30

But they shook their heads, and said that there was nothing about King John in any of their books.

Who acts: ni, nothing · What happens: shake, say, be · To what, where: heads · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «Fifty Famous Stories Retold» by James Baldwin, I. the Three Questions.. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (ni, nothing), 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	But	but	CCONJ	_	3 shook	cc
2	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	3 shook	nsubj
3	shook	shake	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	5 heads	nmod:poss
5	heads	head	NOUN	Number=Plur	3 shook	obj
6	,	,	PUNCT	_	8 said	punct
7	and	and	CCONJ	_	8 said	cc
8	said	say	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	3 shook	conj
9	that	that	SCONJ	_	11 was	mark
10	there	there	PRON	PronType=Dem	11 was	expl
11	was	be	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	8 said	ccomp
12	nothing	nothing	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Neg	11 was	nsubj
13	about	about	ADP	_	15 John	case
14	King	King	PROPN	Number=Sing	15 John	nmod:desc
15	John	John	PROPN	Number=Sing	12 nothing	nmod
16	in	in	ADP	_	17 any	case
17	any	any	DET	PronType=Ind	15 John	nmod
18	of	of	ADP	_	20 books	case
19	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	20 books	nmod:poss
20	books	book	NOUN	Number=Plur	17 any	nmod
21	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 shook	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	roles by
1	shake	past	ni = no	ni's heads		vn shake-22.3-2 «NP V NP together»: agent=Agent head=Patient
2	say speech: assert	past	ni = no not said here			vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic
3	be	past	nothing		there	vn exist-47.1 «NP V»: agent=Theme

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.

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