The Crimson Fairy Book, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 15, sentence 33
But he might as well have tried to squeeze blood out of a stone.
Who acts: prince · What happens: try, squeeze · To what, where: blood, stone
This is a sentence of «The Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, The Crimson Fairy Book, part 15. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (prince), 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 | _ | 7 tried | cc |
| 2 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 7 tried | nsubj |
| 3 | might | might | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 7 tried | aux |
| 4 | as | as | ADV | ExtPos=CCONJ | 7 tried | cc |
| 5 | well | well | ADV | Degree=Pos | 4 as | fixed |
| 6 | have | have | AUX | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=1 Tense=Pres VerbForm=Fin | 7 tried | aux |
| 7 | tried | try | VERB | Tense=Past VerbForm=Part | root | root |
| 8 | to | to | PART | _ | 9 squeeze | mark |
| 9 | squeeze | squeeze | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 7 tried | xcomp |
| 10 | blood | blood | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 squeeze | obj |
| 11 | out | out | ADP | _ | 14 stone | case |
| 12 | of | of | ADP | _ | 14 stone | case |
| 13 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 14 stone | det |
| 14 | stone | stone | NOUN | Number=Sing | 9 squeeze | obl |
| 15 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 7 tried | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | try | might · perfect | prince | vn try-61.1 «NP V S_INF»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality | |||||
| 2 | squeeze not said to happen | to-infinitive | prince not said here | blood | a stone | vn funnel-9.3-1-1 «NP V NP PP.trajectory»: agent=Agent blood=Theme out stone=Trajectory |
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 Crimson Fairy Book» by Andrew Lang, Project Gutenberg book 2435 (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/pg2435/15/33/