Three hundred Aesop’s fables, Aesop’s Fables, part 7, sentence 58
“Anything to please you,” said the old man; “we can but try.”
Who acts: old man · What happens: please, say, try · To what, where: you · 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 (old man), 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 | _ | 2 Anything | punct |
| 2 | Anything | anything | PRON | Number=Sing PronType=Ind | 8 said | nsubj |
| 3 | to | to | PART | _ | 4 please | mark |
| 4 | please | please | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 2 Anything | acl |
| 5 | you | you | PRON | Case=Acc Person=2 PronType=Prs | 4 please | obj |
| 6 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 2 Anything | punct |
| 7 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 2 Anything | punct |
| 8 | said | say | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 9 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 11 man | det |
| 10 | old | old | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 11 man | amod |
| 11 | man | man | NOUN | Number=Sing | 8 said | nsubj |
| 12 | ; | ; | PUNCT | _ | 17 try | punct |
| 13 | “ | " | PUNCT | _ | 17 try | punct |
| 14 | we | we | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=1 PronType=Prs | 15 can | nsubj |
| 15 | can | can | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 17 try | aux |
| 16 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 17 try | cc |
| 17 | try | try | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 8 said | ccomp |
| 18 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 17 try | punct |
| 19 | ” | " | PUNCT | _ | 17 try | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | please in a quote | to-infinitive | the old man not said here | you | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Stimulus you=Experiencer | ||||
| 2 | say speech: assert | past | the old man | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic | |||||
| 3 | try in a quote | can | vn amuse-31.1 «NP V ADV-Middle»: agent=Experiencer |
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/pg21/9/58/