Three hundred Aesop’s fables, Aesop’s Fables, part 7, sentence 38
The poor beast replied, not without a touch of reason: “Why do you ask me?
Who acts: poor beast · What happens: reply, ask, touch · To what, where: poor beast, me, reason · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «Three hundred Aesop’s fables» by Aesop, Aesop’s Fables, part 7. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (poor beast), 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 | 3 beast | det |
| 2 | poor | poor | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 3 beast | amod |
| 3 | beast | beast | NOUN | Number=Sing | 17 ask | nsubj |
| 4 | replied | reply | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | 3 beast | acl |
| 5 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 9 touch | punct |
| 6 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 9 touch | advmod |
| 7 | without | without | ADP | _ | 9 touch | case |
| 8 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 9 touch | det |
| 9 | touch | touch | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 replied | advcl |
| 10 | of | of | ADP | _ | 11 reason | case |
| 11 | reason | reason | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 touch | nmod |
| 12 | : | : | PUNCT | _ | 17 ask | punct |
| 13 | “ | " | PUNCT | _ | 17 ask | punct |
| 14 | Why | why | ADV | PronType=Int | 17 ask | advmod |
| 15 | do | do | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 17 ask | aux |
| 16 | you | you | PRON | Case=Nom Person=2 PronType=Prs | 17 ask | nsubj |
| 17 | ask | ask | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | root | root |
| 18 | me | I | PRON | Case=Acc Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs | 17 ask | iobj |
| 19 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 17 ask | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | reply speech: ask | participle | the poor beast not said here | vn respond-113 «NP V»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 2 | ask speech: ask in a quote | present · do-support | the poor beast | me | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V NP.recipient»: agent=Agent i=Recipient | ||||
| 3 | touch | reason | nom touch «event transitive»: of=patient |
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: «Three hundred Aesop’s fables» by Aesop, Project Gutenberg book 21 (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/pg21/9/38/