The Book of Dragons, The Dragon Tamers], sentence 35
And they tried so hard to believe that there could be nothing there that presently they very nearly did believe it.
Who acts: wife · What happens: try, believe, be · To what, where: nothing, face
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 (wife), 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 | And | and | CCONJ | _ | 3 tried | cc |
| 2 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 3 tried | nsubj |
| 3 | tried | try | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | so | so | ADV | _ | 5 hard | advmod |
| 5 | hard | hard | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 12 nothing | amod |
| 6 | to | to | PART | _ | 7 believe | mark |
| 7 | believe | believe | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 5 hard | ccomp |
| 8 | that | that | SCONJ | _ | 11 be | mark |
| 9 | there | there | PRON | PronType=Dem | 11 be | expl |
| 10 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 11 be | aux |
| 11 | be | be | AUX | VerbForm=Inf | 12 nothing | cop |
| 12 | nothing | nothing | PRON | Number=Sing PronType=Neg | 3 tried | obj |
| 13 | there | there | ADV | PronType=Dem | 12 nothing | advmod |
| 14 | that | that | ADV | _ | 15 presently | advmod |
| 15 | presently | presently | ADV | _ | 20 believe | advmod |
| 16 | they | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 20 believe | nsubj |
| 17 | very | very | ADV | _ | 18 nearly | advmod |
| 18 | nearly | nearly | ADV | _ | 20 believe | advmod |
| 19 | did | do | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 20 believe | aux |
| 20 | believe | believe | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 3 tried | xcomp |
| 21 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 20 believe | obj |
| 22 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 tried | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | try | past | wife | vn try-61.1 «NP V S_ING»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality | |||||
| 2 | believe | to-infinitive | vn admire-31.2 «NP V that S»: agent=Experiencer | ||||||
| 3 | is a | infinitive | nothing | there | tree rules | ||||
| 4 | believe not said to happen | past · do-support | wife | face | nearly, presently property | vn admire-31.2 «NP V NP»: agent=Experiencer it=Stimulus |
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/pg23661/12/35/