The Book of Dragons, Opening, part 10, sentence 121
He sat down to work out his sum with a piece of chalk on a smooth stone.
Who acts: Nigel · What happens: sit down, work out, sum · To what, where: sum, smooth stone
This is a sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, part 10. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Nigel), 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 | He | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 2 sat | nsubj |
| 2 | sat | sit | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 3 | down | down | ADV | _ | 2 sat | advmod |
| 4 | to | to | PART | _ | 5 work | mark |
| 5 | work | work | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 2 sat | advcl |
| 6 | out | out | ADP | _ | 5 work | compound:prt |
| 7 | his | his | PRON | Case=Gen Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs | 8 sum | nmod:poss |
| 8 | sum | sum | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 work | obj |
| 9 | with | with | ADP | _ | 11 piece | case |
| 10 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 11 piece | det |
| 11 | piece | piece | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 work | obl |
| 12 | of | of | ADP | _ | 13 chalk | case |
| 13 | chalk | chalk | NOUN | Number=Sing | 11 piece | nmod |
| 14 | on | on | ADP | _ | 17 stone | case |
| 15 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 17 stone | det |
| 16 | smooth | smooth | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 17 stone | amod |
| 17 | stone | stone | NOUN | Number=Sing | 5 work | obl |
| 18 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 2 sat | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | sit down | past | Nigel | down property | vn assuming_position-50 «NP V»: agent=Agent | ||||
| 2 | work out | to-infinitive | Nigel not said here | Nigel's sum | a smooth stone | with a piece of chalk | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent sum=Topic | ||
| 3 | sum | Nigel | nom sum «possession 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: «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Project Gutenberg book 23661 (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/pg23661/10/121/