Grimms' Fairy Tales, The Robber Bridegroom, sentence 40
The robber took a light and began looking for it, but he could not find it.
Who acts: robber, finger · What happens: take, begin, look, not find · To what, where: light
This is a sentence of «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, The Robber Bridegroom. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (robber, finger), 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 | The | the | DET | Definite=Def PronType=Art | 2 robber | det |
| 2 | robber | robber | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 took | nsubj |
| 3 | took | take | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | root | root |
| 4 | a | a | DET | Definite=Ind PronType=Art | 5 light | det |
| 5 | light | light | NOUN | Number=Sing | 3 took | obj |
| 6 | and | and | CCONJ | _ | 7 began | cc |
| 7 | began | begin | VERB | Mood=Ind Number=Sing Person=3 Tense=Past VerbForm=Fin | 3 took | conj |
| 8 | looking | look | VERB | VerbForm=Ger | 7 began | xcomp |
| 9 | for | for | ADP | _ | 10 it | case |
| 10 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 8 looking | obl |
| 11 | , | , | PUNCT | _ | 16 find | punct |
| 12 | but | but | CCONJ | _ | 16 find | cc |
| 13 | he | he | PRON | Case=Nom Gender=Masc Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 16 find | nsubj |
| 14 | could | could | AUX | VerbForm=Fin | 16 find | aux |
| 15 | not | not | PART | Polarity=Neg | 16 find | advmod |
| 16 | find | find | VERB | VerbForm=Inf | 3 took | conj |
| 17 | it | it | PRON | Case=Acc Gender=Neut Number=Sing Person=3 PronType=Prs | 16 find | obj |
| 18 | . | . | PUNCT | _ | 3 took | punct |
Pragmatics
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | take | past | the robber | a light | vn bring-11.3 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent light=Theme | ||||
| 2 | begin | past | the robber not said here | vn begin-55.1-1-1 «NP V S_ING»: agent=Agent clause=Eventuality | |||||
| 3 | look | gerund | the robber not said here | for light | vn rummage-35.5 «NP V PP.location PP.theme»: agent=Agent for it=Theme | ||||
| 4 | not find | could | finger | light | vn discover-84 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent it=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: «Grimms' Fairy Tales» by Jacob Grimm, Project Gutenberg book 2591 (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/pg2591/24/40/