The Book of Dragons, Opening, part 5, sentence 54

But before long these specimens began to seem less valuable.

Who acts: long · What happens: begin, seem

This is a sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, 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 (long), 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	But	but	CCONJ	_	6 began	cc
2	before	before	ADP	_	3 long	case
3	long	long	ADJ	Degree=Pos	6 began	nsubj
4	these	this	DET	Number=Plur PronType=Dem	5 specimens	det
5	specimens	specimen	NOUN	Number=Plur	3 long	nsubj
6	began	begin	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
7	to	to	PART	_	8 seem	mark
8	seem	seem	VERB	VerbForm=Inf	6 began	xcomp
9	less	less	ADV	Degree=Cmp	10 valuable	advmod
10	valuable	valuable	ADJ	Degree=Pos	8 seem	xcomp
11	.	.	PUNCT	_	6 began	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	where	when	other	roles by
1	begin	past	long						vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality
2	seem	to-infinitive	long not said here					valuable property	vn seem-109-1-1-1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Theme

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.

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