The Book of Dragons, Opening, part 9, sentence 3
"What's the matter?" he asked, settling on the dragon's tail.
Who acts: Jane · What happens: be, ask, settle · To what, where: matter · Speech: someone speaks here
This is a sentence of «The Book of Dragons» by E. Nesbit, Opening, part 9. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Jane), 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 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 5 matter | punct |
| 2 | What | what | PRON | PronType=Int | 5 matter | nsubj |
| 3 | 's | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 5 matter | cop |
| 4 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 5 matter | det |
| 5 | matter | matter | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 asked | ccomp |
| 6 | ? | ? | PUNCT | _ | 5 matter | punct |
| 7 | " | " | PUNCT | _ | 5 matter | punct |
| 8 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 9 asked | nsubj |
| 9 | asked | ask | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 10 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 11 settling | punct |
| 11 | settling | settle | VERB | Tense=Pres VerbForm=Part | 9 asked | advcl |
| 12 | on | on | ADP | _ | 16 tail | case |
| 13 | the | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 14 dragon | det |
| 14 | dragon | dragon | NOUN | Number=Sing | 16 tail | nmod:poss |
| 15 | 's | 's | PART | _ | 14 dragon | case |
| 16 | tail | tail | NOUN | Number=Sing | 11 settling | obl |
| 17 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 9 asked | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | is a in a quote | present | the matter | tree rules | |||||
| 2 | ask speech: ask | past | Jane | vn inquire-37.1.2 «NP V»: agent=Agent | |||||
| 3 | settle | gerund | Jane not said here | on the dragon's tail | vn correspond-36.1 «NP V PP.theme S»: agent=Agent on tail=Topic |
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/pg23661/9/3/