The Book of Dragons, The Dragon Tamers], sentence 274

The children were fed at the town's expense--on whatever they liked; and they ate nothing but cake and buns and sweet things, and they said the poor dragon was very welcome to their bread and milk.

Who acts: children, poor dragon · What happens: feed, like, eat, say, be · To what, where: children, expense, nothing · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, The Dragon Tamers]. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (children, poor dragon), 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 children	det
2	children	child	NOUN	Number=Plur	4 fed	nsubj:pass
3	were	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 fed	aux:pass
4	fed	feed	VERB	Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass	root	root
5	at	at	ADP	_	9 expense	case
6	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	7 town	det
7	town	town	NOUN	Number=Sing	9 expense	nmod:poss
8	's	's	PART	_	7 town	case
9	expense	expense	NOUN	Number=Sing	4 fed	obl
10	--	--	PUNCT	_	12 whatever	punct
11	on	on	ADP	_	12 whatever	case
12	whatever	whatever	PRON	PronType=Rel	4 fed	conj
13	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	14 liked	nsubj
14	liked	like	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	12 whatever	acl:relcl
15	;	;	PUNCT	_	18 ate	punct
16	and	and	CCONJ	_	18 ate	cc
17	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	18 ate	nsubj
18	ate	eat	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	4 fed	parataxis
19	nothing	nothing	PRON	Number=Sing PronType=Neg	18 ate	obj
20	but	but	CCONJ	_	21 cake	cc
21	cake	cake	NOUN	Number=Sing	19 nothing	conj
22	and	and	CCONJ	_	23 buns	cc
23	buns	bun	NOUN	Number=Plur	19 nothing	conj
24	and	and	CCONJ	_	26 things	cc
25	sweet	sweet	ADJ	Degree=Pos	26 things	amod
26	things	thing	NOUN	Number=Plur	23 buns	conj
27	,	,	PUNCT	_	30 said	punct
28	and	and	CCONJ	_	30 said	cc
29	they	they	PRON	Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs	30 said	nsubj
30	said	say	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	18 ate	conj
31	the	the	DET	Definite=Def PronType=Art	33 dragon	det
32	poor	poor	ADJ	Degree=Pos	33 dragon	amod
33	dragon	dragon	NOUN	Number=Sing	36 welcome	nsubj
34	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	36 welcome	cop
35	very	very	ADV	_	36 welcome	advmod
36	welcome	welcome	ADJ	Degree=Pos	30 said	ccomp
37	to	to	ADP	_	39 bread	case
38	their	their	PRON	Case=Gen Number=Plur Person=3 Poss=Yes PronType=Prs	39 bread	nmod:poss
39	bread	bread	NOUN	Number=Sing	36 welcome	obl
40	and	and	CCONJ	_	41 milk	cc
41	milk	milk	NOUN	Number=Sing	39 bread	conj
42	.	.	PUNCT	_	4 fed	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	where	other	roles by
1	feed	past · passive		the children	the town's expense		vn feeding-39.7 «NP V NP»: subject=Recipient
2	like	past	children = child				vn want-32.1-1-1 «NP V NP S_INF»: agent=Pivot
3	eat	past	children = child	nothing			vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent nothing=Patient
4	say speech: assert	past	children = child				vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent
5	is	past	the poor dragon			to children's bread and milk; welcome property	tree rules

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/pg23661/12/274/