Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore, Chapter VI. LEGENDS, part 5, sentence 23
His parents did all they could to trace him, but their attempts were in vain.
Who acts: parents, attempts · What happens: do, trace, be, attempt · To what, where: all, couple
This is a sentence of «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Chapter VI. LEGENDS, part 5. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (parents, attempts), 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 | 2 parents | nmod:poss |
| 2 | parents | parent | NOUN | Number=Plur | 3 did | nsubj |
| 3 | did | do | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | all | all | DET | PronType=Tot | 3 did | obj |
| 5 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 6 could | nsubj |
| 6 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 4 all | nmod |
| 7 | to | to | PART | _ | 8 trace | mark |
| 8 | trace | trace | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 6 could | xcomp |
| 9 | him | he | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 8 trace | obj |
| 10 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 16 vain | punct |
| 11 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 16 vain | cc |
| 12 | their | their | PRON | Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 13 attempts | nmod:poss |
| 13 | attempts | attempt | NOUN | Number=Plur | 16 vain | nsubj |
| 14 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 16 vain | cop |
| 15 | in | in | ADP | _ | 16 vain | case |
| 16 | vain | vain | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 3 did | conj |
| 17 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 did | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | do | past | couple's parents | all | vn act-114-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent all=Eventuality | ||||
| 2 | trace | to-infinitive | couple's parents not said here | couple | vn scribble-25.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent he=Theme | ||||
| 3 | is | past | parents's attempts | vain property | tree rules | ||||
| 4 | attempt | parents = parent | nom attempt «act transitive»: poss=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: «Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore», Project Gutenberg book 22373 (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/pg22373/60/23/