The Aesop for Children, The Old Lion, sentence 8
_It is cowardly to attack the defenseless, though he be an enemy.
Who acts: face, Lion · What happens: be, attack · To what, where: defenseless, enemy
This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Old Lion. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (face, Lion), 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 | _ | _ | PUNCT | _ | 4 cowardly | punct |
| 2 | It | it | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 4 cowardly | nsubj |
| 3 | is | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 4 cowardly | cop |
| 4 | cowardly | cowardly | ADJ | Degree=Pos | root | root |
| 5 | to | to | PART | _ | 6 attack | mark |
| 6 | attack | attack | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 4 cowardly | advcl |
| 7 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 8 defenseless | det |
| 8 | defenseless | defenseless | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 6 attack | obj |
| 9 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 14 enemy | punct |
| 10 | though | though | SCONJ | _ | 14 enemy | mark |
| 11 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 14 enemy | nsubj |
| 12 | be | be | AUX | VerbForm=Inf | 14 enemy | cop |
| 13 | an | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 14 enemy | det |
| 14 | enemy | enemy | NOUN | Number=Sing | 6 attack | obl |
| 15 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 4 cowardly | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is | present | face | cowardly property | tree rules | ||||
| 2 | attack | to-infinitive | face not said here | the defenseless | vn attack-60.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent defenseless=Patient | ||||
| 3 | is a | infinitive | Lion | a enemy | 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: «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, Project Gutenberg book 19994 (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/pg19994/116/8/