The Aesop for Children, The Porcupine and the Snakes, sentence 5

His sharp quills pricked them at every turn, and at last they politely asked him to leave.

Who acts: sharp quills, Snakes · What happens: prick, ask, leave · To what, where: Snakes, turn, Porcupine, last

This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Porcupine and the Snakes. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (sharp quills, Snakes), 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	His	his	PRON	Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	3 quills	nmod:poss
2	sharp	sharp	ADJ	Degree=Pos	3 quills	amod
3	quills	quill	NOUN	Number=Plur	4 pricked	nsubj
4	pricked	prick	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
5	them	they	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	4 pricked	obj
6	at	at	ADP	_	8 turn	case
7	every	every	DET	PronType=Tot	8 turn	det
8	turn	turn	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 pricked	obl
9	,	,	PUNCT	_	15 asked	punct
10	and	and	CCONJ	_	15 asked	cc
11	at	at	ADP	_	12 last	case
12	last	last	ADJ	Degree=Pos	15 asked	obl
13	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	15 asked	nsubj
14	politely	politely	ADV	_	15 asked	advmod
15	asked	ask	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 pricked	conj
16	him	he	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	15 asked	iobj
17	to	to	PART	_	18 leave	mark
18	leave	leave	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	15 asked	xcomp
19	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 pricked	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	other	roles by
1	prick	past	Porcupine's sharp quills	Snakes = snake		every turn		vn hurt-40.8.3-2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer they=Patient
2	ask speech: ask	past	Snakes = snake		Porcupine	last	politely property	vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP whether S_INF»: agent=Agent he=Recipient clause=Topic
3	leave not said to happen	to-infinitive	Snakes = snake not said here					vn escape-51.1-1-1 «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: «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/pg19994/119/5/