The Book of Dragons, Opening, part 6, sentence 45

St. Denis told me about it; said it was a very pretty thing.

Who acts: St., glass · What happens: tell, say, be · To what, where: me, pretty thing · Speech: someone speaks here

This is a sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, part 6. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (St., glass), 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	St.	St.	PROPN	Number=Sing	3 told	nsubj
2	Denis	Denis	PROPN	Number=Sing	1 St.	flat
3	told	tell	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	root	root
4	me	I	PRON	Case=Acc Number=Sing Person=1 PronType=Prs	3 told	iobj
5	about	about	ADP	_	6 it	case
6	it	it	PRON	Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	3 told	obl
7	;	;	PUNCT	_	8 said	punct
8	said	say	VERB	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	3 told	conj
9	it	it	PRON	Case=Nom Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs	14 thing	nsubj
10	was	be	AUX	Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin	14 thing	cop
11	a	a	DET	Definite=Ind PronType=Art	14 thing	det
12	very	very	ADV	_	13 pretty	advmod
13	pretty	pretty	ADJ	Degree=Pos	14 thing	amod
14	thing	thing	NOUN	Number=Sing	8 said	ccomp
15	.	.	PUNCT	_	3 told	punct

Pragmatics

#	verb	tense, mood	who	what, whom	to whom	other	roles by
1	tell speech: assert	past	St.		me	about glass	vn transfer_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S_ING»: agent=Agent i=Recipient about it=Topic
2	say speech: assert	past	St. not said here				vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent
3	is a	past	glass	a pretty thing			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.

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