The Aesop for Children, The Wolf and the Lean Dog, sentence 11

The Wolf could not help thinking how nice it would be to have a fine fat Dog to eat instead of the scrawny object before him.

Who acts: Wolf · What happens: not help, think, be, have, eat · To what, where: fine fat Dog

This is a sentence of «The Aesop for Children» by Aesop, The Wolf and the Lean Dog. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Wolf), 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	2 Wolf	det
2	Wolf	Wolf	PROPN	Number=Sing	5 help	nsubj
3	could	could	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	5 help	aux
4	not	not	PART	Polarity=Neg	5 help	advmod
5	help	help	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	root	root
6	thinking	think	VERB	VerbForm=Ger	5 help	xcomp
7	how	how	ADV	PronType=Int	8 nice	advmod
8	nice	nice	ADJ	Degree=Pos	6 thinking	ccomp
9	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	8 nice	nsubj
10	would	would	AUX	VerbForm=Fin	8 nice	aux
11	be	be	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	8 nice	xcomp
12	to	to	PART	_	13 have	mark
13	have	have	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	11 be	xcomp
14	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	17 Dog	det
15	fine	fine	ADJ	Degree=Pos	17 Dog	amod
16	fat	fat	NOUN	Number=Sing	17 Dog	compound
17	Dog	dog	NOUN	Number=Sing	13 have	obj
18	to	to	PART	_	19 eat	mark
19	eat	eat	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	17 Dog	acl
20	instead	instead	ADV	ExtPos=ADP	24 object	case
21	of	of	ADP	_	20 instead	fixed
22	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	24 object	det
23	scrawny	scrawny	ADJ	Degree=Pos	24 object	amod
24	object	object	NOUN	Number=Sing	19 eat	obl
25	before	before	ADP	_	26 him	case
26	him	he	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	19 eat	obl
27	.	.	PUNCT	_	5 help	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	when	other	roles by
1	not help	could	the Wolf				vn help-72.1-1-1 «NP V NP S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Theme
2	think speech: other not said to happen	gerund	the Wolf not said here				vn focus-87.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent
3	be	infinitive	the Wolf not said here				tree rules
4	have	to-infinitive	the Wolf not said here	a fine fat Dog			vn birth-28.2-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent dog=Patient
5	eat	to-infinitive	the Wolf not said here	a fine fat Dog not said here	before Wolf	instead the scrawny object	vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent

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/pg19994/56/11/