The Book of Dragons, Opening, part 9, sentence 55
They were all eaten by moths--and motheaten things are of no use, even to light fires!
Who acts: moths, motheaten things · What happens: eat, be · To what, where: fires
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 (moths, motheaten things), 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 | They | they | PRON | Case=Nom Number=Plur Person=3 PronType=Prs | 4 eaten | nsubj |
| 2 | were | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 4 eaten | aux:pass |
| 3 | all | all | ADV | _ | 4 eaten | advmod |
| 4 | eaten | eat | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part Voice=Pass | root | root |
| 5 | by | by | ADP | _ | 6 moths | case |
| 6 | moths | moth | NOUN | Number=Plur | 4 eaten | obl:agent |
| 7 | -- | -- | PUNCT | _ | 14 use | punct |
| 8 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 14 use | cc |
| 9 | motheaten | motheaten | ADJ | Degree=Pos | 10 things | amod |
| 10 | things | thing | NOUN | Number=Plur | 14 use | nsubj |
| 11 | are | be | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Plur Person=3 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 14 use | cop |
| 12 | of | of | ADP | _ | 14 use | case |
| 13 | no | no | DET | PronType=Neg | 14 use | det |
| 14 | use | use | NOUN | Number=Sing | 4 eaten | conj |
| 15 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 19 fires | punct |
| 16 | even | even | ADV | _ | 19 fires | advmod |
| 17 | to | to | ADP | _ | 19 fires | case |
| 18 | light | light | NOUN | Number=Sing | 19 fires | compound |
| 19 | fires | fire | NOUN | Number=Plur | 4 eaten | conj |
| 20 | ! | ! | PUNCT | _ | 4 eaten | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | eat | past · passive | moths | fires = fire | all property | vn eat-39.1-1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent subject=Patient | |||
| 2 | is | present | motheaten things | of no use | 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/pg23661/9/55/